From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2003 - 20:06:29 MST
At 07:49 AM 31/10/03 -0700, you wrote:
>[hkhenson] A long standing problem for L5 is that the space colony meme
>has always
>been long on motivation and short on possible real actions directed to
>developing space colonies. This lack of outlets for highly motivated people
>may be the reason there have been so many internal fights in L5 independent
>of who was in charge. Here we have a specific program (in outline at least)
>that leads directly to space colonies in a short time. It will involve a
>tremendous amount of work. The reader should consider this article a call
>to action on a specific course leading to colonies in space.
>
>[Lucifer] Thanks for scanning and posting this. How did the L5 membership
>react to
>the military-oriented meme?
More or less didn't. The "call to action" fell on deaf ears.
>Were your predictions more or less correct (about the
>fraction that would resign over it)?
Since it didn't happen, don't know how they would have reacted.
>Was this proposal the last attempt to kickstart
>the L5?
More or less. The writing had been on the wall for a while. I don't
remember exactly when we published the chapter out of Freeman Dyson's book
_Disturbing the Universe_ but that laid out the problem, space was 10,000
times to expensive to colonize. It would take a rise in income of about
100 (possible during the run up to the singularity) and a reduction of 100
in the cost of going into space . . . which is easy with a skyhook made of
carbon nanotubes.
>Did it die with the SDI?
I think L5 died independent of SDI. For that matter, so did SDI.
Keith Henson
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