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[counting]

P.S. The abundance of energy is one thing. To transform or transfer the energy and using it to production is anther matter. You can't transport pure energy.

I went to a Star Trek convention today (Yayzzz!!!) and this NASA guy had a booth over there. I overheard him saying something about beaming energy via microwave or something. I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm just quoting someone with a laminated ID card.

This is what I am talking about, and probably what you've heard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
Definitely doable. Just not economically sound. (Even more expensive than Nuclear Power Plant per GW)

[Eagleon]

The initial cost of colonizing space isn't affordable today even if it pays off a billion fold over the course of a few thousand years.

How about a few decades? There's enormous amounts of mineral wealth available out there (talking about multiples of total yearly world production of many metals, per object), even just in the NEOs accessible to conventional rockets. I don't buy for a second that we don't have the science to mine them robotically - the engineering, yes, but that comes a lot easier when there's actual money being put into it, deadlines set, and businesses built. Right now, we don't have a Ford making our orbital repraps or robotic foundries, but that doesn't mean we don't have the equivalent to a combustion engine.

As soon as we build one supply line with a suitably universal orbital factory somewhere in the chain, it becomes a lot easier to build more. Then things like a lunar space port becomes a lot more sustainable and attractive, and pretty soon you've got the infrastructure to build much larger structures, with some pretty impressive business potential.

[mainiac]

It's not economically sound to do on earth.  If you establish a space colony then suddenly your material costs shoot down to near zero (all materials are easily accessible on the moon in abundant quantities) and your transportation costs go even lower.  The only thing left is energy costs and because this thing is an energy source, the energy costs would decline once you get it up and running.  Then you have a very, very profitable export industry for the colonies which fuels further expansion to the colonies (which for reasons too many to list would have a higher standard of living then earth) until everyone is living in space.

It is NOT a payoff period of a thousand years.  It's something that could mean that every single human being would live in a world (well, an artificial world) with abundant energy and materials within the span of a single lifetime of the first colony.  It's just a function of it being easy to build a second colony once that first one is made, the materials are there and the construction conditions are much easier then earth.  Sending more people from earth would be easy if you don't need to make the vehicle for a round trip.  So you start for a colony for ten thousand, two year later have a colony for twenty thousand and forty years later you have homes, energy, food and ample space for ten billion people.

[Eagleon]

I wouldn't go that far, actually. The logistics of transporting that many people into space are horrifying to contemplate, even if it's one way and even with something like a space elevator. Moving over 70 million people/yr, all the time being replaced by more births, you'd be talking centuries of work, and that's not accounting for the possibility of a baby boom from the drop in land prices.

The real reason we should want space colonization is that Earth is pretty vulnerable. A comet impact, an asteroid, biological warfare, a nearby supernova, supervolcanos, and who knows what else. It's folly to shove it off on another generation, because we have no idea when it's coming, but we know that in all practicality it will and that it has before.

Re: OT, I can't take this new fangled decade seriously enough to give it a name like the 20th century decades had. From hereon, it shall be known as "Bah!"

[counting]

What I think is it's not economically sound NOW under EARTH economy point of view. It's like the very early stage of a new industries, like in pre-train industry world with no railroad, not even with a workable coal supply and mining industry. Every new technology needs time to build it's related infrastructure (this time in space) before it's profitable and sustainable in the future.

The initial investment needs the visions, and people willing to take the chances and having dreams. That's what I think is lacking right now in general views (in some area of the world at least). But it should be done someday in the future. I just hope it won't be in some very distant future.

P.S. SBSP system really is more expensive to generate energy right NOW. The cost of the fuel to send massive equipment up to earth orbit along is enormous. And you still need to build the prototypes and pioneer productions. And you need to maintain it as well. Unless there is a chance that its energy infrastructures is built for some reasons (or by government funds), it's will not be able to compete with the current well-developed power grid. 

And this is the decade of FUN.

[Nadaka]

Colonizing space will take trillions probably 10s of trillions and possibly 100s of trillions of dollars.

You need a to launch megatons of machinery into orbit and beyond to create the factories you are calling for.

Now you have to pay for it without changing the political unity, social inequity and productive capacity of earth in any.

Do you see how intractable your proposals are? The only path towards colonizing space is making earth work first.

End social disparity, end energy scarcity, allow 7 billion people to be as productive as the average western worker. Then you have the resources to colonize space.

[Vector]

It's time for the second Industrial Revolution.

This will be beautiful.

[Duuvian]

Haha, that's funny, I told my dad how we could have solar powered lasers shoot energy to earth one time when we were ice fishing and he just shook his head. I'll look into this wiki article.

EDIT: Apparently it's mostly going to be used to power things in space. Rather than power cords it will be lasers aimed at a really big target of energy collectors.

That's exactly how I imagined it too, except on earth, although obviously lasers probably would not work due to the atmosphere.

[Eagleon]

Colonizing space will take trillions probably 10s of trillions and possibly 100s of trillions of dollars.

You need a to launch megatons of machinery into orbit and beyond to create the factories you are calling for.

I'm talking about smaller, more universal robotics-driven machinery, built from parts that can be made by the factory itself. The mining could start small, with a solar-sail driven delivery system and a forked supply-line between carbonaceous objects providing materials for polymers as well as fuel for miners, and metalloid objects providing structural, heat-resistant, and electrical materials for additional mining vehicles and factory equipment.

If hobbyists can make a 3D printer for under $600 that can make most of its own parts, I'm sure a dedicated team of engineers could work through to designing something that could do the same in space. It's thoroughly possible to start working on this now, and to say that it would take more than the annual GDP of the US is ridiculous hyperbole. Throughout its entire lifetime, NASA has received $470~ billion dollars in funding, using a 2000 ton manned vehicle and various other equipment, thoroughly inefficient chemical propulsion, and antiquated hardware, and yet they've still managed to send a not-insignificant-sized probe to interstellar space, ffs. Give me a reason why we can't do something much more delta-v modest with better, more compact propulsion, and computers that are hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than Voyager 1's, not even mentioning the fact that it will actually be making the cost up in raw materials, and then you can snark away the proposition.

[RedKing]

It's time for the second Industrial Revolution.

This will be beautiful.

I can't wait to see what the new horrible industrial accidents look like. "Dad used to work in the Buckyball foundries, until he developed gray-goo lung...."

[Lysabild]

Predicting the future is like walking on the street blindfolded, observe and wait or act upon your ideals.

[mainiac]

What I think is it's not economically sound NOW under EARTH economy point of view. It's like the very early stage of a new industries, like in pre-train industry world with no railroad, not even with a workable coal supply and mining industry. Every new technology needs time to build it's related infrastructure (this time in space) before it's profitable and sustainable in the future.

The last major technology needed was photovoltaic cells.  The technology exists today, all of it.

Living in space is really simple when you think about it.  You need a biosphere (plants), structure (steel), energy (solar), artificial gravity (centrifuge) and radiation shielding (sufficient mass of the station).  Once you have that, you have a sustainable system and everything else is just window dressing.

Colonizing space will take trillions probably 10s of trillions and possibly 100s of trillions of dollars.

You need a to launch megatons of machinery into orbit and beyond to create the factories you are calling for.

Completely missing the point which is that all the materials and energy needed to make that machinery is available on the moon.  That's why a small colony would be able to grow very, very quickly.  All that would be needed from earth would be more people.  And more people would be easy to send from earth if you are sending them on one way trips, picking them up in LEO and mass producing the rockets.

[Euld]

Wouldn't there be issues with mining out the moon, like the decreased mass would alter the effects the moon has on the Earth?

[mainiac]

Wouldn't there be issues with mining out the moon, like the decreased mass would alter the effects the moon has on the Earth?

Drop in the bucket man, drop in the bucket.

[DJ]

Thus far we have been unable to make sustainable farms in closed systems. This means we can't grow food in space, which means no serious colonization as transporting bulk food from Earth would be prohibitively expensive.