In summary, PERMANENT is for developing outer space on a very large scale, rapidly, by using materials already in space -- asteroids near Earth and/or lunar material -- instead of expensively blasting up from Earth all the materials used in space. After all, the Europeans who settled America didn't bring their bricks and cement from Europe...Although there are a few recent posts on the forums, most of the site seems to date from 2004, and I don't know its status. But it looks like there are a lot of valuable materials (including a book) and interesting ideas, so I plan to look around some more.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
PERMANENT
I just found a reference to this web site in a blog entry somewhere. PERMANENT has ambitious goals and a wealth of well-organized material on asteroids, lunar material, manufacturing in space, space products & services, space colonies, economic/legal issues, and more. From the introduction:
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3 comments:
After all, the Europeans who settled America didn't bring their bricks and cement from Europe...
They also didn't have to travel fifty miles straight up to get there. Analogy is okay but you can get wrapped around the axle and end up looking goofy. Yes, I know you're only quoting.
Some good ideas I think. Even with a program of living off the land we have a chicken and egg problem. After all you gotta ship people up there and a modest amount of consumables to get things started and we're talking serious amounts of money.
You still need a way into space that is less costly than what we have now.
Definitely right, Brian - I found this site intriguing for its obvious passion/enthusiasm (driven mainly by one individual it seems) and for the obvious attention to organizing the information, though I only looked at a few pages. There needs to be a proper balance between enthusiasm/vision and practicality. But too much practicality and you say (as many do) "why bother with space?" -- too much "vision" and you write SF (which is a useful thing too, if its driven by talent as well as passion). But the key to it all is lowering the cost of access to orbit.
But too much practicality and you say (as many do) "why bother with space?"
There is nothing more practical than the long term survival of the species.
The people who would have us stuck here (You'll never need more that 640 mb of RAM) would have us still living in trees. We're better than that.
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