Entwife's Asteroid Settlement

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‹date/t= ime›Sunday, April 09, 2006

‹footer›Sharable Universe for

Entwife’s Asteroid Settlement

Slide Numb= er ‹#= 250;


	The Ent and the Ent-wife
	From The Grey Havens board on the web, I found among its Songs and Tales, “T= he Ent and the Ent-wife” from J.R.R. Tolkien - I’ll just strain = fair use so far as to quote the last lines of some verses from the Cirdan site= (… maintained and copyrighted (c) 1996-2002, by Cirdan. All r= ights reserved. Hosted by cro.net.)


	And my fantastical idea is: why= not a land that is not of Middle- or any other kind of Earth? You know: “I go to prepare a place f= or thee.” Now top THAT a= s a mixture of metaphors!

	Text from: Songs and tales from = J.R.R. Tolkien's work.


	That’s enough of fantasy. How about horror? In this picture, im= agine an astronaut in orbit saying, “Houston, YOU’VE got a problem.”
	Robert A. Heinlein said:
	“The earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep a= ll its eggs in.”


	From the website www.spaceweather.com, the current number of known potentially hazardous asteroids.
	So duck, already! Not that tha= t will do you much good.
	Carleton Rhodes has a presentation, “Survive the Next Asteroid,” where he shows calculations on r= isks and consequences. He points= out that at present there are funds appropriated for finding these potentially dangerous objects, but not a penny for putting into effect any method of altering their progress.
	It’s bound to happen - some of the incoming won’t miss our fragile blue marble, and the consequences will be disastrous.


	Remember that the infrastructure that makes us so comfortable is fragile and vulnerable; without it, we’re exceedingly uncomfortable, or maybe d= ead.


	And if the human species is going to survive then it needs to evolve socially whether it does physically or not – space resources are sufficient = to end the fundamental cause of aggression.
	Fuller was speaking in this quotation of making vastly better use of earthbound resources; I’m talking about initiating the use of off-Earth resour= ces.
	Think about it. Nothing up there = has ever been owned by anybody, ever. Isn’t the biggest earthbound problem today that of who owns = what real estate and occupies it according to what historical precedent?
	And by the time “my” settlements are possible – just decades – human population on this solitary, vulnerable dirtball will appro= ach 20 billion.
	But space – now – space is expansive, and a good thing, too.<= b> If you settle in space, y= ou might not need to “study war no more.”
	(Pardon the cliché, but it sums up this thought nicely.)