Size of 'empires'

[Victor_D]

The problems are the "living standards". You are living better and using more resources than movie star of the age of black and white. The luxuries are becoming norm and then necessities, but we don't need everything we have to live or even to be happy. Fix this and everything else would be "easy".

And how do you plan to accomplish that? Both of us are using computers to communicate now - can we do without them? Hardly, yet for more than a half of humanity, owning a personal computer is pure luxury.

I am positive that if we push for recycling and sane lifestyle really hard, we can reach true sustainability. The problem is this is an option only for countries which already are reasonably developed (I count my own among them, surely to the surprise of many Americans). For the likes of China who are basically trying to mimic the way the Western world used to industrialize itself and get rich in the process, this is a huge problem. China is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week, if I remember correctly, and there are other countries which haven't even started developing (most of Africa included). The problem is, this model won't work in a world of greatly diminished resources. Once these countries increase consumption to approach Western levels, I am afraid it will be the last straw which broke the back of Earth's environmental carrying capacity.

/doom&gloom

[bunnyboy]

The problems are the "living standards". You are living better and using more resources than movie star of the age of black and white. The luxuries are becoming norm and then necessities, but we don't need everything we have to live or even to be happy. Fix this and everything else would be "easy".

And how do you plan to accomplish that?

If I could answer for that, I would be wisest man of world. But I'm sure, that even my first real computer, 286 from decades ago, had enough of calculating power, that I could read your comment.

[Smithy]

-"Less waste. We throw more food on garbage than which is used on humanitarian aid."
Waste is an issue, but biological waste is actually becoming quite a useful resource as it can be digested for methane, and the sludge left after is an effective fertaliser. Humanitarian aid is a tricky and touchy subject. The food distribution infrastructure is not good enough basically...

Keep that tought next time, when you see people searching through trashs for food.

I intend too, but it doesn't change the fact that the food in my supermarket can't be used in say Africa. The logistical systems simply don't exist. The world is a nasty, cruel, and brutal place so it should come as no surprise that corruption and poverty tend to walk hand in hand, as well as continuous civil wars and tribal violence. To begin effectively tackling poverty, rule of law must replace embezzlement, coercion, and graft. But it isn't our right to enforce the rule of law on other countries sovereignty around the world. We did it a hundred years ago and look where that got us. If anything some may say that humanitarian aid is simply a new form of "white man's burden". 200 years ago we justified our actions as civilizing the Africans/Indians, now we are saving them from poverty. It's a position I don't fully agree with but it's important to keep everything in perspective.

If your talking about homelessness in western society. Then that is really complicated, even in our welfare states we have relatively large populations of homelessness. Even for example Denmark with it's great commitment to welfare has a large number of homeless in Copenhagen. This is as far as anyone can tell is mainly due to substance abuse and/or mental illness compounded with a lack of housing in the area (ie central London), but we are doing our best to reduce this problem, by trying to build new council houses, and through the work of charities such as St. Mungo's. I abhor food wastage because I hate wasting money and anything else really, the idea that the gone off carrots in little jimmy's fridge could solve world hunger is a little naive really in my honest opinion. The best thing we can do is try and apply pressure for lawful and representative governance. But other than that I don't really know.

I have seen a plans, where you can give the people of Manhattan all they need (thought not what they want) by products of one building. Thought I'm still little suspicious of that.

Ah yes, what you need, but not necessarily what you want. Kinda spits in the face of free choice, and liberty really.

The current way of mass producing GM seeds aren't sustainable. Monocultured crops are very weaks against pestilences and diseases. Also, how the genes are shooted in, produce lot of weird mutations as the placement of foreign genes are random.

Erm, true to an extent. Which is why the GM crop development by the University of Cambridge and the Australian government (to name big players I know of) are tested extensively, far more than say selectively breed crops. But "weird" mutations is not unique only to GM cropping. As I illustrated above, selective breeding can be and is just as hazardous and unpredictable (It's just that we consider the process more wholesome). As to Monocultured, I assume you mean a variety of say wheat with very little gene variation? If so, it hasn't seemed to be too derogatory ever since we have began to selectively breed crops. Which as I'm sure you know once you get the results you want, you develop hundreds of cuttings. All genetically identical, but variation will begin to occur quite quickly with cross-pollination from other growers in the area of the seed crop and through natural mutations of the gene code.

[Mr Bojangles]

The problems are the "living standards". You are living better and using more resources than movie star of the age of black and white. The luxuries are becoming norm and then necessities, but we don't need everything we have to live or even to be happy. Fix this and everything else would be "easy".

And how do you plan to accomplish that?

If I could answer for that, I would be wisest man of world. But I'm sure, that even my first real computer, 286 from decades ago, had enough of calculating power, that I could read your comment.

And your feet are enough to get your from point A to point B. But, the ground can be pretty rough on your feet, so you figure out a way to protect them (sandals). Then, you notice that the sandals themselves can be pretty brutal on your feet, too, so you add some padding (fancier sandals). Now, you're walking along, and all of a sudden, not only is the ground rough, it's also wet! The hell, Nature? So, you add a little more material to your sandals, and suddenly you have shoes.

Eventually, you decide "Screw walking!" and instead figure out how to tame a horse. This process continues until you have luxury cars, trains, and airplanes. It's really the pattern of all human technology. We really only need the most basic implementations to survive (sandals), but, we're tinkerers and we want to make things easier for ourselves (horse and cart). We also like pretty, shiny, flashy things (Mercedes, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, etc.)

So, yes, your old 286 likely had enough compute power to parse comments on this forum. But, you'd have to ditch all the fancy bells and whistles, which, while not strictly necessary, are pretty nice to have. (As an aside, my family's first computer was a Tandy 1000; loved it!) I can agree with you that a fully-globalized Western consumer culture would most likely be untenable, and moderation on all of our parts is a "good" thing, but I don't think your 286 is the right answer.

[bunnyboy]

the food in my supermarket can't be used in say Africa.

No at all. But it can be used to feed someone in your neighbour. One of my friends is mormon and he uses to call foreigners and students to dinner and talk. It is much better than buy more food than you can eat and throw half of it away.

The current way of mass producing GM seeds aren't sustainable. Monocultured crops are very weaks against pestilences and diseases. Also, how the genes are shooted in, produce lot of weird mutations as the placement of foreign genes are random.

Erm, true to an extent. Which is why the GM crop development by the University of Cambridge and the Australian government (to name big players I know of) are tested extensively, far more than say selectively breed crops. But "weird" mutations is not unique only to GM cropping. As I illustrated above, selective breeding can be and is just as hazardous and unpredictable (It's just that we consider the process more wholesome). As to Monocultured, I assume you mean a variety of say wheat with very little gene variation? If so, it hasn't seemed to be too derogatory ever since we have began to selectively breed crops. Which as I'm sure you know once you get the results you want, you develop hundreds of cuttings. All genetically identical, but variation will begin to occur quite quickly with cross-pollination from other growers in the area of the seed crop and through natural mutations of the gene code.

I do support GM research, but not how the GM farming is done. When you buy GM seeds, you aren't allowed to take seeds from your harvest. Make a mistake or when crosspollution happens, the GM company will own everything with their branded genetic code.
Typical way of making genetic transfer is put wanted gene on nanoparticle of gold and shoot it inside of cell. Result, the gene end in the random part of code, which may do anything. Sometimes sprouting the seeds and leaves on wrong parts. The standardized machines can't pick them up and the seeds stay on field. And when they start to grow and mix with another, suddenly half of your fields grow weeds.
Another way is make clones, so there aren't any variation at all. If disease get on field, it spreads like explosion. Having high variable on seeds give less harvest on good year, but you don't lose all of your crops on smallest hic-up from natures part.

[Trantor]

The problems are the "living standards". You are living better and using more resources than movie star of the age of black and white. The luxuries are becoming norm and then necessities, but we don't need everything we have to live or even to be happy. Fix this and everything else would be "easy".

And how do you plan to accomplish that?

Hm. I see no way of accomplishing that without severely hampering progress.

[Victor_D]

The problems are the "living standards". You are living better and using more resources than movie star of the age of black and white. The luxuries are becoming norm and then necessities, but we don't need everything we have to live or even to be happy. Fix this and everything else would be "easy".

And how do you plan to accomplish that?

Hm. I see no way of accomplishing that without severely hampering progress.

Actually, I believe rapid progress is the only way sustainability can be achieved. We need to learn how to produce our "luxury" (read "decent living standards") sustainably, meaning without overstraining the environment. This means near 100% recycling, clean energy, pollution-free manufacturing, emissions-free travelling/transportation, etc. etc. etc.

My fear with regard to this is that our "window of opportunity" to get to this semi-utopistic future is closing fast as our (well, human, Europe's population is more or less stabilized now) population grows and the developing countries don't give a damn about sustainability because they have hundreds of millions of people to house, feed, cloth, and stuff with consumer crap they've seen in Western TV shows.

We'd better establish colonies on Mars ASAP, just in case we fail here.

[discord]

a good first step would be self sustainable orbital and lunar colonies, after that move'em to the asteroid belt to get a industry going, after that mars. just my thoughts on it.

<edit>
which incidentally requires rather large lift capacity, preferably at a lower cost compared to current practices, see comment in that spaceplane discussion.
</edit>

[Trantor]

a good first step would be self sustainable orbital and lunar colonies, after that move'em to the asteroid belt to get a industry going, after that mars. just my thoughts on it.

<edit>
which incidentally requires rather large lift capacity, preferably at a lower cost compared to current practices, see comment in that spaceplane discussion.
</edit>

I don´t see that becoming possible with our todays´ tech-level. And no, the Skylon won´t change anything.

[Smithy]

I do support GM research, but not how the GM farming is done. When you buy GM seeds, you aren't allowed to take seeds from your harvest. Make a mistake or when crosspollution happens, the GM company will own everything with their branded genetic code.

That's not exclusive to GM, but virtually all seeds natural or "artificial". Almost all varieties of seeds are owned as "patterned" products. And to certain degree you can understand a seed companies position. It's spends a lot of money and time developing new strains and breeds, the last thing it want's is for it's market advantage to be lost as soon as it goes to market. And then they need to make a profit as to continue their business. And when we have grown opium and sedum, we have no interest in reclaiming seeds.So having a reliable source of commercial seeds is useful for us.

[Trantor]

the last thing it want's is for it's market advantage to be lost as soon as it goes to market. And then they need to make a profit as to continue their business.

So should we people suffer for the shareholder´s value?

[Mr Bojangles]

a good first step would be self sustainable orbital and lunar colonies, after that move'em to the asteroid belt to get a industry going, after that mars. just my thoughts on it.

<edit>
which incidentally requires rather large lift capacity, preferably at a lower cost compared to current practices, see comment in that spaceplane discussion.
</edit>

In order to be self-sustaining, a colony would need to be more than just materially- and energetically-independent of Earth. It would also need to be "people-independent", i.e., a population able to be maintain its own growth via birth. With today's tech, we could just about achieve the first two points, but the last is beyond us.

Thanks to Mir and the ISS, we have a pretty good idea of what microgravity does to a healthy adult human being. We have no idea how that would affect a developing fetus. Perhaps the effects would be somewhat mitigated in a gravity well (such as on the Moon or Mars), but the fact remains that we don't know. Here on Earth, we tend to take for granted that gravity affects everything that we do, including our development cycles.

I think a self-sustaining orbital colony will be possible at some point in the future. We can spin it up to simulate Earth-normal gravity. The same can't be said of Lunar, Martian, or even asteroid-based colonies. The solutions to our problems will not be simple.

[fredgiblet]

So should we people suffer for the shareholder´s value?

Of course! No go, and consume.

More seriously rational patent law drives innovation by providing funds for more R&D. Of course the key word there is rational.

[Victor_D]

a good first step would be self sustainable orbital and lunar colonies, after that move'em to the asteroid belt to get a industry going, after that mars. just my thoughts on it.

which incidentally requires rather large lift capacity, preferably at a lower cost compared to current practices, see comment in that spaceplane discussion.

Uh-huh. Well, I have a comment to that.

1) We need decent cis-lunar space infrastructure. This will come about on its own, because it makes economic sense. Once it gets robust enough, it will start making sense mining fuel and material on the Moon to maintain this infrastructure.
2) Colonies on the Moon will likely never be completely self-sustaining as the Moon lacks many vital materials you simply need (nitrogen, carbon, volatiles in general). You can of course get them in trace amounts from the rocks, but that would be hugely inefficient and it would likely be cheaper to import stuff from Earth.
3) Asteroids as goldmines are a bit of a sci-fi cliché. We may tap into them if we find something we really need in large enough concentration, but as a rule of thumb, it is better to mine stuff closer to the places with the industry which needs them.
4) Mars is by far the most "habitable" planet besides Earth. It has everything we need to build a self-sustaining civilization which, if need be, could be completely independent on Earth.
5) Saturn may be the "Persian Gulf of the Solar System" as Zubrin put it, if we start mining He-3 from its atmosphere and colonize Titan.
6) Mercury is undervalued. We probably just found water at its poles, which means colonization is possible. I think it will be a nice place for manufacturing anti-matter some time in the future.
7) Venus is pretty much useless I am afraid. It's not even worth the effort of trying to terraform it.
8) Large space habitats are in my opinion not a good proposition, because they lack an economic rationale. It makes sense to have zero-g factories, spacedocks, defence installations, things like that, but they likely won't require huge manpower to function. So what would all these people in space habitats do? Unless they were all geniuses selling their inventions, I don't see an economic raison d'etre for them.

So, in the short term, I see our expansion in space like this: Earth->LEO/GEO->Moon/Near Earth Asteroids->Mars->Main Belt Asteroids->Outer Solar System->Mercury->?

[bunnyboy]

7) Venus is pretty much useless I am afraid. It's not even worth the effort of trying to terraform it.

I did read some graphs long time ago and found out that if you can build hovering installation (like zeppelin), both pressure and temperature are quite comfortable on 50 km altitude. It just leave the problems of windspeed and corrosive athmosphere.

[Victor_D]

7) Venus is pretty much useless I am afraid. It's not even worth the effort of trying to terraform it.

I did read some graphs long time ago and found out that if you can build hovering installation (like zeppelin), both pressure and temperature are quite comfortable on 50 km altitude. It just leave the problems of windspeed and corrosive athmosphere.

As a research station, yes. But that's about it - you can't do much else on Venus, unless you like a pressure cooker climate mixed with some sulphuric acid for good measure.

[Absalom]

The problems are the "living standards". You are living better and using more resources than movie star of the age of black and white. The luxuries are becoming norm and then necessities, but we don't need everything we have to live or even to be happy. Fix this and everything else would be "easy".

And how do you plan to accomplish that? Both of us are using computers to communicate now - can we do without them? Hardly, yet for more than a half of humanity, owning a personal computer is pure luxury.

Computers? Why are you bringing those up? The resource hogs are automobiles and climate control. Cars take up perhaps half of the energy used in the US, and those big coolers that you see in supermarkets take so much power that you simply can't stick some sort of surge protector on them. I should know, I asked an HVAC tech who works on them. Computers are low-power devices, which is why your cell phone can go for hours without a charge.

I am positive that if we push for recycling and sane lifestyle really hard, we can reach true sustainability. The problem is this is an option only for countries which already are reasonably developed (I count my own among them, surely to the surprise of many Americans). For the likes of China who are basically trying to mimic the way the Western world used to industrialize itself and get rich in the process, this is a huge problem. China is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week, if I remember correctly, and there are other countries which haven't even started developing (most of Africa included). The problem is, this model won't work in a world of greatly diminished resources. Once these countries increase consumption to approach Western levels, I am afraid it will be the last straw which broke the back of Earth's environmental carrying capacity.

If done smart (and particularly with smart quasi-central planning) it can be made to work. The key is to get most of the population centralized into cities, and use rail as the primary inter-city (and in-city) transport mechanism. Then you add e.g. standardized sorted-trash for the entire place (primarily so that kitchen scraps can be returned to agricultural regions), and require all new construction to use sufficient (very large amounts of) insulation. There are certainly limits to how much this obtains for you, but the US's lifestyle is massively cheaper even if you just systematically add insulation.

The biggie is e.g. water.

I have seen a plans, where you can give the people of Manhattan all they need (thought not what they want) by products of one building. Thought I'm still little suspicious of that.

Ah yes, what you need, but not necessarily what you want. Kinda spits in the face of free choice, and liberty really.

Free choice is not "get what you want", it's "choose what you buy". Different things entirely. Liberty from need isn't liberty to the person who produces.

As to Monocultured, I assume you mean a variety of say wheat with very little gene variation? If so, it hasn't seemed to be too derogatory ever since we have began to selectively breed crops. Which as I'm sure you know once you get the results you want, you develop hundreds of cuttings. All genetically identical, but variation will begin to occur quite quickly with cross-pollination from other growers in the area of the seed crop and through natural mutations of the gene code.

Yes, that's what mono-culture means. The current diversity within the major crops is low, which makes it more likely that individual diseases will wipe out huge volumes of food. Theoretically you'll get cross-pollination, but the crops in the neighboring fields will usually be closely related, so it's rather like marrying a cousin. There used to be dozens of common varieties for the major crops, now there's usually less than a dozen. The vulnerability is obvious.

the last thing it want's is for it's market advantage to be lost as soon as it goes to market. And then they need to make a profit as to continue their business.

So should we people suffer for the shareholder´s value?

No, people should suffer for the sake of getting what they want, Econ. 101 .

a good first step would be self sustainable orbital and lunar colonies, after that move'em to the asteroid belt to get a industry going, after that mars. just my thoughts on it.

<edit>
which incidentally requires rather large lift capacity, preferably at a lower cost compared to current practices, see comment in that spaceplane discussion.
</edit>

In order to be self-sustaining, a colony would need to be more than just materially- and energetically-independent of Earth. It would also need to be "people-independent", i.e., a population able to be maintain its own growth via birth. With today's tech, we could just about achieve the first two points, but the last is beyond us.

Considering that a major reason for space colonies is to relieve population pressures, not a real problem. Habitat production and launch costs are the big stumbling blocks.

Besides, what you actually need is net-sustaining. As long as the "system" sustains itself, individual "nodes" are a small-scale concern.

3) Asteroids as goldmines are a bit of a sci-fi cliché. We may tap into them if we find something we really need in large enough concentration, but as a rule of thumb, it is better to mine stuff closer to the places with the industry which needs them.

One of the nice things about space is that you can move the industry. Hence why asteroids are considered good mining choices: they let you move to the next asteroid without much complication.

4) Mars is by far the most "habitable" planet besides Earth. It has everything we need to build a self-sustaining civilization which, if need be, could be completely independent on Earth.

Mars doesn't have an atmosphere that we can breath, nor a biosphere that we can live off of. Since we'll have to construct all of that anyways, it's generally agreed that the orbital-colony ideas are better choices.

5) Saturn may be the "Persian Gulf of the Solar System" as Zubrin put it, if we start mining He-3 from its atmosphere and colonize Titan.

Well, it certainly couldn't be that much less practical than Mars. If nothing else, I believe that Titan has a smaller gravity well.

6) Mercury is undervalued. We probably just found water at its poles, which means colonization is possible. I think it will be a nice place for manufacturing anti-matter some time in the future.

The trick is: why would we want to land? The only possibility that I know of is the combination of solar power and minerals, and for that we can just use reflectors to focus sunlight onto collectors at whatever asteroid we're mining.

7) Venus is pretty much useless I am afraid. It's not even worth the effort of trying to terraform it.

Actually, the density of the Venusian atmosphere could make it useful. I don't recall the constituency, but it obviously has volatiles, many of which could be important for space habitats.

8) Large space habitats are in my opinion not a good proposition, because they lack an economic rationale. It makes sense to have zero-g factories, spacedocks, defence installations, things like that, but they likely won't require huge manpower to function. So what would all these people in space habitats do? Unless they were all geniuses selling their inventions, I don't see an economic raison d'etre for them.

They offer basically the same advantages of most of the planets, but traveling between stations is easier than returning to orbit or traveling between distant surface colonies. Meanwhile, everything that we know you can do on a planetary surface we believe we can do on a station as well. You also get easy access to both vacuum and zero-gee, and can physically move your colony if you have a reason (e.g. economics). Space habitats are basically a better option than planetary colonies, Zubrin is just fascinated with the romance.

So, in the short term, I see our expansion in space like this: Earth->LEO/GEO->Moon/Near Earth Asteroids->Mars->Main Belt Asteroids->Outer Solar System->Mercury->?

My list is Earth->Leo/Geo/Lagrange->Moon/Near Earth Asteroid/Main Belt Asteroids->Mars->Others

remember, many Near Earth Asteroids actually follow very elliptical orbits around the sun, so they aren't as easy as they seem. Meanwhile, I don't think the Moon has all that much to suggest itself as a preliminary colony site.

[Smithy]

the last thing it want's is for it's market advantage to be lost as soon as it goes to market. And then they need to make a profit as to continue their business.

So should we people suffer for the shareholder´s value?

Now you are assuming all seed companies are publicly traded companies. A huge amount of crop research would not be done without seed companies, let alone GM. The small company I work for in Hampshire, we work closely with a research company in Yorkshire that's family owned. If you just gave away their crop development and new breed varieties they would be broke.

Nor do people suffer in my experience. As I mentioned before, the last thing we want to do with sedum, and opium is harvest the seeds. Leaving seeds to the seed companies is effective specialisation. You don't like who your currently buying from, buy from someone else.

[Victor_D]

One of the nice things about space is that you can move the industry. Hence why asteroids are considered good mining choices: they let you move to the next asteroid without much complication.

Doesn't matter if you need to move bulk mass to the industry which needs all these resources. Plus, asteroids have their own challenges (near zero-g, often a serious lack of volatiles and other chemicals needed for metal extractions, etc.).

Mars doesn't have an atmosphere that we can breath, nor a biosphere that we can live off of. Since we'll have to construct all of that anyways, it's generally agreed that the orbital-colony ideas are better choices.

Generally agreed by whom? Not many in the space community would agree with this, certainly I haven't met many such people. Mars is a planet, a planet has resources (it's actually a huge pile of them). Empty space offers no resources except for solar energy. An orbital settlement colony would essentially has to import *everything* from Earth or some other planet. What would it export - how would it justify its existence *economically*?

The fact is that on Mars, you can find everything to build a sustainable independent colony, including all the biogenic elements. You need to build something? Get out, mine stuff, process it, use it. It's probably the case that since Mars has had an active geology for quite some time, it has also developed localized concentrations of resources. Asteroids are usually undifferentiated piles of rubble. There are metallic ones, but they usually lack volatiles that are needed to efficiently extract the metals (because I doubt you want to be sending unprocessed rock back to your planet for processing, that would be terribly useless).

Well, it certainly couldn't be that much less practical than Mars. If nothing else, I believe that Titan has a smaller gravity well.

More importantly, it has an atmosphere and readily available supplies of all kinds of hydrocarbons and other organic compounds.

The trick is: why would we want to land? The only possibility that I know of is the combination of solar power and minerals, and for that we can just use reflectors to focus sunlight onto collectors at whatever asteroid we're mining.

Inverse square law. Mercury gets far more sunlight, and I assume we can make photovoltaic panels out of its rocks. With water on the poles, a small human colony can exist to tend the machines.

Actually, the density of the Venusian atmosphere could make it useful. I don't recall the constituency, but it obviously has volatiles, many of which could be important for space habitats.

You mean the space habitats which make no sense? Venus' atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, co2, with clouds of sulphuric acid. It's very hydrogen-poor, unfortunately. It's not that the volatiles are of no value, but Venus' steep gravity well makes it rather impractical to get them there. Earth is a much better source, much closer to where we want them.

They offer basically the same advantages of most of the planets,

No they don't, they're just enclosed bubbles of air in an ocean of nothingness. It's like comparing an island made of solid rock, say, Britain, with an artificial platform, say, Sealand. Even with near 100% effective closed-loop life support, they'll always be dependent on resources from the outside. Again, what economic rationale can you offer for building them?

but traveling between stations is easier than returning to orbit or traveling between distant surface colonies.

So? Martian colonists wouldn't want to travel back and forth; they signed up for colonizing Mars.

Meanwhile, everything that we know you can do on a planetary surface we believe we can do on a station as well. You also get easy access to both vacuum and zero-gee, and can physically move your colony if you have a reason (e.g. economics). Space habitats are basically a better option than planetary colonies, Zubrin is just fascinated with the romance.

What you're citing is a case for orbital manufacturing, if we find something that can only be economically manufactured in zero-g (say, special crystals, unique alloys, exotic chemicals/drugs, etc.). But that will hardly require manpower in the millions. An orbital/lagrange point factory wouldn't be a settlement/colony.

Planets like Earth and Mars are places where humans can actually live, work, and develop an independent sustainable culture. Which is kind of the point of colonizing space.

Meanwhile, I don't think the Moon has all that much to suggest itself as a preliminary colony site.

It has water and some metals we might use to tend for our cis-lunar space infrastructure.

[discord]

why people would want to live in space.

#1 medical reasons, lowered strain on heart for instance, could let people live longer.
#2 scenic, the view gotta be awesome.
#3 it's SPACE man! that is another awesome in itself.

probably a few more, can't think of them right now, tired as hell, but get a one way ticket down to 20k US and there will be people that would wanna go up.