From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: Justification for the Space Program
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
Distribution: usa, world
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 11:05:09 GMT

In article <18DEC199221562125@judy.uh.edu> wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes:
>In article <1992Dec18.191837.11025@cs.rochester.edu>, dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes...
>[stuff deleted]
>>This is all *so* ludicrous.  You are refering to results from the
>>infamous "Limits To Growth" study.  It's been widely disparaged as so
>>simplified as to be useless (for example, aggregating all "pollution"
>>into a single variable.)  It's propaganda masquerading behind computer
>>models.
>>
>You are half right. The limits to growth study did not consider space
>resources at all, thinking that they would have zero impact.  The models
>that are usually grouped into the "Malthusian" box to derive their genesis
>from the Club of Rome studies. 

The limits to growth study didn't include space resources because they
are essentially irrelevant to the problem. Matter can neither be created
nor destroyed, aside from some nuclear processes whose effects on a large
enough scale would make the existance of the Earth moot at any event. All
the iron, copper, lead, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc that existed on
Earth in prehistoric times still exists here, other than the tiny amounts
we have tossed into space. What changes is the chemical forms of the
materials. This too is irrelevant given sufficient energy resources
since all of the important chemical reactions are reversible through
one pathway or another.

>>Much more believable results have been obtained by actually studying
>>specific resources here on earth.  When you do that, and when you take
>>into account technological improvements, the idea that things are
>>going to necessarily go to hell just evaporates.
>
>Believable by whom? You? Well all of these extrapolations and any belief in
>them are acts of faith. You believe what you choose. Sophmore calculus teaches
>the fallacy of extrapolating a value beyond the known data point.

A point that should be kept in mind when talking about speculative space 
resources. Using *known* data points, it can be shown that we already
have the processes in place to use ores of lower concentration than are
commonly used. An example is copper. US copper mines work with ores that
are considered tailings in South American mines, but US copper mines
remain competitive with those mines because we are using different 
processes. Also you are not considering the fundamental fact that matter
is not destroyed by use. All the copper that's ever been mined is still
here on Earth. Recycling is not just a buzz word of the environmentalists,
it's a economic reality in several industries today, for example the 
aluminum can business. It's only because raw ores remain so plentiful
and so cheap to process that we don't recycle more than we do. Some
landfills are richer sources of materials than the ores we are processing
today.

>>The 1500 year figure you present is a figment of your imagination.
>>Come on -- technology is going to be rather different by the time the
>>year 3500 rolls around, space exploration or not.  You can't possibly
>>have any idea what technology will be like even 100 years down the
>>road, let alone 1500.
>
>Yes technology will be a lot lower, if we let those who are vigorously 
>promoting a turn from technology development to get the upper hand. Doubt this
>you do? Look then at the trends in funding for technology development worldwide.
>It was a great surprise when I read in Pliny's (Roman naturalist) how he
>decried the loss of the impetus to develop new technology and how this lack
>was coming back to drain the Empire of its very life and vigor. (Pliny 214-xx)

That is a great surprise, about as great as the Victorian patent office
head who said that they might as well close the patent office because 
all the worthwhile inventions had already been made. It's only been since
WWII that the idea that research and development must be done by vast
armies of white coated savants funded by public monies has become the
popular idea of what research must be. Quite frankly most major breakthru
developments have not come that way. I need only point to Steven Jobs
and the Apple to dismiss that idea.
 
>>The fundamental limit to resource exploitation is imposed by
>>availability of energy, and space exploitation is *not* needed to get
>>essentially inexhaustible supplies of that.
>
>Oh really? Tell us how you intend to accomplish that? No one else has. True,
>if we get cheap fusion we can drive the cost of energy way down. Too bad we
>are a long way from that. The demand for energy to support a world population
>at a standard of living comparable to the industrialize nations would mean
>a two order of magnitude production increase in the supply of energy, and
>material resources, with it's attendant pollution, both chemical and thermal.
>To blithly deride the space option by pointing to technology tha does not
>exist or is even on the horizon is irresponsible.

To name only one technology that has this capability, nuclear fission.
With breeders, of which we have working examples, and reprocessing, 
again of which we have working examples, we can supply world energy 
demands at levels several orders of magnitude above current consumption
for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And that's only one
energy technology, others include geothermal and the various "alternative"
technologies that depend on the influx of solar energy. Some of those,
like hydropower dams, coal, oil, and biomass burning are well developed,
others like photovoltaics and solar thermal are in their infantcy but
their potential is clear. Essentially all our energy resources come directly
or indirectly from nuclear processes today. As we increase our technical
ability to get closer to the ultimate source, energy becomes increasingly
available and cheap. Note that cheap has a different meaning to a wealthy
society than a poor one. $10 a gallon of gasoline equivalent is cheap to
a populace with an average income of $200,000 a year. And incomes are 
rising at a rate beyond anything our ancestors dreamed thanks to the
synergy of an increasingly skilled population applying more and more 
advanced technology. We are only near the beginning of the value added
spiral of wealth creation.

>>The argument *against* spending money on unprofitable space activities
>>is that our descendants would be better off if we spent the money on
>>capital formation here on earth, so that they will be more prosperous
>>(and, if they like, go into space).  We are able to launch rockets now
>>not because the Victorians wanted to go the moon, or because they sent
>>explorers to Antarctica, but because they had the industrial revolution.
>
>Captial formation means wealth. This has been the driver of civilization for
>at least four thousand years. Where there is wealth there is plenty. In the
>past, wealth generation has come in Three ways:
>
>Natural resource explotiation
>Economic activity redistributing the wealth to the more productive
>War and conquest

You forgot the most important creator of wealth, value added labor.
The raw materials in a new car cost less than $600, it's the value
added by creative labor that brings the price to over $10,000. The
real wealth generator in a technical society is always a leveraging
of knowledge into productive value added labor. If raw resource 
exploitation were a primary wealth producer, farmers and miners
would be the wealthiest people in society. Since that's not the 
case, your argument must be flawed. Note that it was the case in
pre-technical times that farmers and miners were the wealthest
people, but times and technology have changed to where these are
now bit players in wealth generation.

>The only truly platible, long term solution to the problem of not enough wealth
>is clearly option one. Option two breeds option three by the jealousy endengered
>by the winner of the economic war. (Remember Japan went to war with the US 
>because we were denying them natural resources, "economic sanctions")

War is seldom a net producer of wealth since most productive labor 
is diverted to the task of killing other potentially productive laborers.
Japan is a good example. War did not enrich the Japanese. Indeed it 
impoverished them. That's because they didn't fully understand the
real sources of wealth in a modern society because they were stuck in 
a feudal economy. Now after losing the war, they have become vastly 
wealthy *without* owning substantial natural resources. That's because 
they've come to understand the importance of value added labor.

>Sorry Paul but go to any freshman chemistry class in college today and listen
>to the litany of scarce resources. We are still going forward because we are
>taking resources from the third world. What happens when those are gone?
>What happens when the third world wakes up and says that they are gonna keep
>their resources to fuel their own climb to prosperity? 

Try going to a class above the freshman level for a change. Some of
our basic industries are still using 1900 technology, the steel industry
for example, and depend on a flow of raw ores. Even with access to cheap
ores, they are having their lunch eaten by more modern processes such as
those practiced by Nucor and the Japanese. We don't need the resources of
the third world unless we fail to modernize.

Note that the third world understands that selling their raw resources
is the road to wealth for them because they don't yet have the skilled labor
resources needed to do the real wealth creation generated by value added
labor. In the few cases where they have tried to "modernize" by using
their own resources, the classic examples are the steel mills furnished
by the ex-Soviets to some of their client states, they found that 1900
technology wasn't a wealth creator at all and most of those mills are
now idle. The real wealth creating technologies require a highly skilled
workforce. By selling their ores to the first world, the third world
can generate the revenues necessary to build the infrastructures necessary
to educate their masses. At that point they will be able to adapt truly
modern technical means of wealth creation that aren't enslaved to raw
resource ownership.

>Without the temporary diversion of resources to build a solar system wide
>transportation structure that will allow the exploitation of the nearly
>limitless resources of the solar system, we will eventually hear the
>beating of the hooves of the four horseman of the Apocalypse. The gulf
>war and Somalia are only the first shots in a new an dangerous era. How much
>more expensive will it be in lives and dollars spent, to continue as we
>are today?

Of course we will no more continue as we are today than the Victorians
or Og the caveman continued as they were. Technical progress, based on
skilled labor and energy, will continue to change the face of economic
activity. In 50 years, struggles over petroleum will seem as quaint as 
struggles over whale oil. We will more closely approach the source of
all energy, the atom, by tapping more tightly into the Sun and by using
fission. Both sources will be available in quanities beyond our ability
to use for millions of years to come. That cheap raw energy will allow
us to recycle any material into any other material we need without having
to import from space. 

Large scale imports from space face a dire problem in any event. What
are we going to do with all that extra mass? Earth's gravitational 
field will so increase that no one will be able to stand if we bring
in too much from space. Ultimately we have no choice but to use and
reuse the materials here on Earth. Fortunately that is getting easier
and easier as technology advances.

Gary
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