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To: NicknamedBob
From the beginning the various resources of outer space will be scattered, one kind here, another kind there. It will not be as if a family could settle in one place and find or grow everything they will need to maintain a household, but it will be trade. Water will be in one place, iron in another. The situation will be large scale shipments of single resources, which only large corporations can undertake. Money in some form will be the intermediate for all transactions since simple trade of household surplus for immediate survival will be impossible.

Distance will not be measured in miles but in time. Time management is essential to business. The inner solar system presents distances of two to eighteen months depending how things line up. Improved propulsion should cut the distance as space development proceeds and the bottom line should reflect that improvement.

Development of the distant resources of the solar system will become practical in a business sense when the distances are reduced to months rather than years and decades. During all this development, the presence of humans in interplanetary space will continue to be uncommon as that would cut into the bottom line substantially. The main presence of humans would be the bases on the moon. Secondary bases could be on Mars. All these bases would initially be of a scientific nature, there being no reason to use manned bases in either place for resource handling.

26 posted on 07/11/2005 8:35:15 PM PDT by RightWhale (withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty)
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To: RightWhale
"The situation will be large scale shipments of single resources..."

But there is no reason to ship anything anywhere, unless people are there!

In today's inner cities, the resources are available. The demand is there. And the profit potential is high, but the major corporations don't go there because they are risk-averse.

Only the small, tight-knit family grocer is willing to take the risk, and only because his family backs him.

Resources are where you find them. In Coober-Pedy, the mines became the homes, and the homes are the mines. I would suspect the asteroids will be similar.

A hole in a rock may not appeal to an employee, but it might be just the thing for a family which is society-averse, or even a couple of individuals.

28 posted on 07/11/2005 9:14:26 PM PDT by NicknamedBob (Mighty and enduring? They are but toys of the moment to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.)
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To: RightWhale

29 posted on 07/11/2005 9:20:38 PM PDT by NicknamedBob (Mighty and enduring? They are but toys of the moment to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.)
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