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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Does Automation Take Jobs Away?
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 02:02:33 GMT
Message-ID: <Ctu30D.Mo3@armory.com>
References: <mwilson.775136657@ncratl> <3132ap$i2t@mailer.fsu.edu> <31btum$31e@tribune.usask.ca>
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In article <31btum$31e@tribune.usask.ca>, Henry Choy <choy@cs.usask.ca> wrote:
>Edward Flaherty (eflahert@garnet.acns.fsu.edu) wrote:
>: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark O. Wilson) writes:
>: > 
>: > If robots did 100% of the work, everything would be free.
>
>: 	Not so.  There is still this thing called scarcity we have to 
>: deal with.  
>
>There's the chance that robots can construct ships that can bring us
>objects from space. Scarcity would be reduced a little.
>        Henry Choy                       "Math class is hard" - Barbie
>e-mail: choy@cs.usask.ca                  I AGREE!
---------------------------------------------
There's a hell of a good chance that humans can build ships in orbit which
can go and get us asteroids and bring them back into a parking orbit to
build habitats, plant growing surfaces, and even more suitable fuel for 
engines, solar mass drivers or plasma engines. Yes, a spiral-in orbit to
earth orbit that would be stoppable would take a few years out and back,
but when all of a sudden you see asteroids coming in from every direction,
and park them, you've got some ready made livables in the nickel iron ones,
and the carbonaceous and silica ones can be used for soil and making glass.
And you start accumulating another mountain of wealth and solar power
virtually for free compared to the outlay! We can even return this stuff to
earth via aero braking and drogue chutes, or send stuff up by hi-altitude
scram jet to be picked up by a dipper craft that alters its perhelion to
match with it for a few orbits and then does a delta v again to get to 200
miles up. If one stores energy from the sun in available chemicals, then it
may be do-able! There are even ideas to put up huge balloons and use much
cheaper smaller boosters to put stuff in orbit. We have been doing brute
force launches too long. It has ben proven that a packet can intersect high
orbit (200-250 miles) by launching from a hi altitude jet fighter anyway.
We now have satellite killers launchable from F-15's! That 1000 lb payload
could as easily be supplies or people! Simple craft with jet engines up to
their ceiling and then booster rocket pods on their hardpoints could get
many current designed military craft up to out of 96 percent of the
atmosphere anyway, and from there its not to hard to accelerate to orbit
with small engines. We boost 10 ton satellites to geosynchronous orbit at
23,000 miles out from 100 mile orbit with engines that only weight about a
ton and a half right out of the shuttle orbiter's bay!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

