renclod - 17/8/2007 7:20 AMhttp://astronautix.com/blog/?page_id=4 Low-Tech Colonization Needed - 2006-06-29
halkey - 17/8/2007 8:38 AM18th Century brewing technology should work just fine for brewing the beer needed to get one through the fact that they aren't likely to survive from all of the bad juju requiring the sudden manufacture of slide rules and spacesuits carved from rock. Lets just hope someone had enough foresight to grow the hops before the wrath of God struck.
MKremer - 17/8/2007 12:22 PMBut you also have to balance the price of launching/landing the necessary mass of industrial equipment and parts to collect the raw materials, separate the necessary elements, then create the final product -vs- just launching/landing the mass of the final products themselves.It's important to remember that very, very few people (especially those with the power/financing that matter) care to wait 5-10 years or more to possibly start collecting returns on quite substantial investments (and quite substantial investments are needed for any type lunar startup industrial production). You can include Congress within that group.
khallow - 17/8/2007 4:19 PMOne word: bootstrap. Once you have sufficiently flexible production facilities, no matter how small, they can be used to build larger facilities. Repeat.
khallow - 17/8/2007 8:25 PMA. M. Swallow,There are times when "low tech" is the appropriate technology and times when it's not. No good reason to dabble in vacuum tube technology or mechanical computation devices when there's cheap electronics from Earth.
A_M_Swallow - 17/8/2007 4:51 PMQuotekhallow - 17/8/2007 8:25 PMA. M. Swallow,There are times when "low tech" is the appropriate technology and times when it's not. No good reason to dabble in vacuum tube technology or mechanical computation devices when there's cheap electronics from Earth.Wrong attribution. I am not the one who mentioned vacuum tubes or mechanical calculators.
CuddlyRocket - 19/8/2007 7:20 AMAlthough it can sometimes be fun to speculate about the far future, I tend to prefer to be more near-future practical. For instance, it's going to be a long, long time before a railway is needed on the Moon. You need a great deal of traffic to justify a railway, otherwise you're better off with trucks. But you'll need to breathe straight away!
A_M_Swallow - 19/8/2007 11:43 AMA passenger train may be justified where long distances are involved. Ground vehicles are likely to be limited to 5 mph since we are going over ruff ground. A 1000 mile journey between 2 villages would take 1000 / 5 = 200 hours or nearly 17 days at 12 hours per day. Cable cars tracks can be easier to construct than roads and be over 100 times as fast.