Peripheral

And I was just saying that Oil is not the answer as we need something different that is far less efficient than what we currently use/abuse.

All of the uses for oil in current use is highly wasteful and inefficient. They where all based on the mistaken premise that Oil was in vast supplies and freely available which at the time it was but is no longer. Not to mention Cheap

None of those conditions apply any more and we are on the downward trip as the Supplies run out and hence become far more expensive.

It's already way past the time that we should have been investigating new Technologies to replace Oil but have yet to begin looking in any serious manner.

Col

But the problem is that none of the people running corporations these days have the 'nads to step up and say "Hey, what about the future." Or maybe it's the brains they don't have; given the size of some of these bonuses, they aren't lacking in audacity.

In either case, to the leaders of most businesses today, the future is the next quarterly report and that's as far as they can (or will) see.

etu

don't give a rat's @ss, too. Maybe all they care about is the money and power they can collect over the course of their dim, short lives on this planet.

(Disillusioned, moi?)

I don't think that's been in question for years. But I think their behavior is based on a syndrome, very closely related to Toni's "Alone in the World", called "I Deserve It".

I keep waiting for one of them to get pinned down by a Congressional committee and respond with words to the effect of "I don't run this company for the benefit of anybody except myself." In other words, the truth.

rarely think of the greater good, just their own power and control.

If they would think above themselves just a little the world would be a much better place.

FNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5IIXeR5OUI

Appearing before a Senate Inquiry saying with a straight Face words to the effect that if the AU Authorities allow JH to move out of AU to the Netherlands where they could not be Prosecuted that the Money that JH had promised for Asbestos Victims was assured.

Then 2 years latter JH stops making payments to the Fund that they established and I'm betting that they will never start paying their commitments again. OK so the GFC came and hit them hard but not hard enough to stop the Bonus's the the Heads of the place.

Col

I think the Moon, especially if there are sufficient supplies of water and other minerals for relatively long-term use, would make an excellent staging area to go to the asteroids. Much cheaper getting off the Moon, and you get to keep a lot more of the fuel you start with.

But the asteroids are indeed where the big haul would be. Loads of nickel and iron, plenty of rare-earth elements.

The Moon only any good if we can find a source of stuff that we need. If we use, say, water as something to push out of the back of our rocket motors then we may need the Moon if there really is lots of easy water there - which I doubt.

Other than that, I fear that the maintenance of a Moon colony would simply suck up resources, we'd lose interest and it would be Apollo all over again.

We need proper reusable spacecraft.

I wouldn't consider a Moon Colony to be a good thing. I think of it only as a place to make fuel, assuming there is enough water, by dissociating the water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity production afforded by the high availability of sunlight.

If you can also fabricate parts for spacecraft there - spacecraft which don't need to be able to withstand the stresses of atmospheric travel and high gravity - I think it is a good idea. Particularly if you can get enough of the right minerals there. It would also be easier to dump off metals from the asteroids on the Moon.

I think of it as a bridgehead, if it is workable. Mostly automated, even better. Moonbase Alpha? Why bother.

Of course, space elevators would be a really good way to go on fuel and materials economy in building spacecraft. Ship it all out of the atmosphere and gravity well first.

That all being said, I don't think we should bother to try and do this all really soon. Do just what is needed to explore and develop the tech.

We'll take them wherever we go.