For a Free Frontier: The Case for Space Colonization

[dan2100]

I wrote this a few years ago. It was published in a few places. I hope it's not too immature or juvenile...

Mention "space colonization" to libertarians and other freedom lovers and you are likely to get one of two responses. The first and most prevalent is, in my experience, for them point out how impractical and "futuristic" the idea is. Budgets for space programs are seen as too big for individuals or private companies to fund. The second response is, in my experience, to wonder whether you are some sort of statist. After all, only governments have space programs. Of course, there is always the small contingent of nerds – people who spend a great deal of time fantasizing about future technology – but who wants to be cheered on by them? Instead of accepting this status quo and instead of joining the lunatic fringe, let's look at the issue dispassionately.

Space colonization is defined as moving people to space to live there permanently. This seems simple enough, but there's much debate over what forms space colonization can take, when and how it will be done, who will call the shots and, most importantly, if it will done. Let's begin with a few of the forms it can take.

First on the list is planetary colonization. This involves finding or making suitable planets for humans to live on or even modifying humans (as in post-humanism) to live on planets very different from Earth, such as Mars, the Moon, Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter.

Finding suitable worlds presents a big problem. In our solar system, there seems to be only one world suitable for humans and we're on it. Any attempt to colonize already existing suitable planets will have to wait for interstellar travel. This is a drawback, but there are a few ways to overcome it. An obvious solution is to make spacecraft capable of exploring and transporting humans to other planetary systems. As of now, there are a few designs to choose from (including solar sails, nuclear fission and fusion rockets and the Orion thrust¹) but these would depend on large investments and none of the technologies has been field tested -- at least not for man-rated spaceships.

Another solution is to make the worlds suitable for human life. This has been dubbed "terraforming," although this connotes turning a planet into something similar to Earth. For our purposes, one suitable for humans could be radically different from Earth. There are at least two candidates for terraforming in our solar system, Mars and Venus. (Admittedly, Venus is the hard case and Mars the easy one.) Terraforming strategies vary. One notion is the slow seeding of the target planet with tailored organisms to make it more and more earthlike. This can take a long time – perhaps thousands of years. Another proposal suggests using "fast and dirty" techniques such as crashing comets or forcing volcanic eruptions with nuclear bombs on Mars to make its atmosphere thicker.

The posthuman alternative is to redesign humans, either through genetic engineering or by a machine-like fix such as artificial lungs that can process Martian air. This demands technology of a higher order than today. The advantage here is that one can take planets as they are. The disadvantage is the need for the high tech base. Some might believe that this high tech base can only be brought about by large scale government funding or corporate investment. However, as the technology becomes more readily available, e.g., home genetics labs, cheaper and better prosthetics and wider human/machine interfaces, the potential for grassroots posthumanism also increases. Another disadvantage is that people altered to live in an environment might not be able to live in others. However, this is not a serious problem. Any technology capable of altering people to this degree will most probably be capable of altering them further. We can easily imagine someone adapted to a Martian habitat later being adapted to suit a Titanian (after Saturn's big moon) one and so on. Also, current environment suits, such as space suits, scuba gear and fire fighting equipment, allow people to live in hostile surroundings. There's good reason to think people adapted, say, to live on Mars, could use such things to get by in other environments.

Next, there's O'Neill-style colonization. (Named after G. K. O'Neill, author of The High Frontier, a book on space colonization. See also Colonies in Space by T. A. Heppenheimer.) Why live on planets when they limit movement and environmental options? Why not instead build large space stations the size of conventional cities or bigger where one can live in an environment similar to Earth yet have easy access to all the advantages of space? O'Neill-style colonies would be just that – large cities in space. There are many different types of these colonies on the drawing board, but they all have immense size and internally earthlike conditions in common. All of them seek to simulate Earth by being large enough to house farms, parks and communities with lots of open air. They also rotate to simulate gravity.

Third, there's small station colonization. This differs from O'Neill-style colonization in that it does not rely on huge behemoths to house people. Instead, smaller "ranch-sized" space stations could be built, each housing perhaps a family or a small village. This approach is similar to several successful colonizations on Earth from Polynesia to Plymouth.

This brings us to Lobster-style colonization, so named for Bruce Sterling's short story "Cicada-Queen" (in The Crystal Express). This is another kind of posthumanism. Instead of living in a space station, whether large or small, the individual is redesigned to live in space by a melding of space suit and organism or, in another scenario, to live in space without a space suit. This demands a higher level of technology, but the roots of it can be seen in our present technology.

When will it be done? This is hard to say. Looking at technological limits can give us a clue. With current technology, small station colonization is possible. Already several space stations have been built and operated, e.g., the US SKYLAB and the Soviets' MIRs. They were intended for research, not colonization, but they show small scale space colonies are within our grasp.

It's one thing to show what is possible and another to show when it will happen. One could argue the technology needed for Spain to cross the Atlantic Ocean had been around for years before Columbus, but this in itself did not cause that historic expedition. On the other side of the ledger is economics. We need not only the skill but the money to colonize space. In this regard, out of the above list, small scale colonization is not only the most feasible technologically but also economically – at least in the short run. In the long run, other forms of colonization might overtake it because of economics of scale. Still, we should be wary of making long-range predictions. (Would people living in the sixteenth century have been able to predict even roughly the way American colonization would take shape?) I think this points to space colonization in the next several decades.

How will it be done? In answering the last question, a rough answer to this question was given. Small scale colonies will probably grow out of existing space stations. Modifications need to be made. Existing (and several planned) space stations, including NASA's proposed high-priced "Freedom" space station, are not designed to be colonies. Of course, there are plans for space colonies, but most of these are for O'Neill-style habitats, not the small scale ones I envision for the near future.

What modifications are necessary? Current space stations are designed for short crew rotations, not as permanent homes. Reworking them will have to take this into account. Permanent living makes certain demands on design. One is reliability. This can be overcome by simplifying systems so they are less likely to breakdown and easy to repair.

Another factor is affordability. Although the novelty and romance of living in space will attract some rich people, I'm sure the average colonist will not be a multimillionaire. The high cost of space travel and exploration has little to do with the inherent price of fuel or technology. Current space programs are, like other government projects, run on politics, not economics, making them very inefficient. To put it bluntly, since NASA isn't footing the bill, efficiency is not its concern. (David P. Gump's Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA contains an inventory of what is wrong with NASA along with some rather tame proposals for reform.) To make things cheaper and more efficient, the current space programs should be privatized – or at the very least laws restricting private enterprise in space should be repealed.

Colonization will probably rely on more than just the funds and dreams of would-be colonists. There are a number of reasons to move into space aside from the romance. These include the available resources in terms of both energy (from the sun) and matter (from the asteroids and Earth's Moon), the lack of gravity, the space available and more. One plan that is still being studied is to use colonies to build solar power satellite stations (SSPS). These will supply Earth with cheap electric power. SSPSs would gather sunlight, change it into microwaves and then beam these down to collecting antennas on Earth's surface. The collecting antennas would then convert the microwaves into electricity for consumption. This would eliminate the need for fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power stations.

Moving manufacturing to space is yet another payoff colonists can give to surface dwellers. This would not only lessen the pollution impact and the land use of factories but could possibly eliminate mining on Earth too. The ability to control the environment is much more flexible in space than on Earth. For example, the amount of "gravity" can be changed with current technology. Tailoring germ-free habitats is easier. Bioengineering of risky (on earth) organisms can be carried out with little or no fear of them escaping. The energy available in space from solar radiation is virtually continuous and waste free. These are some things that make space industry attractive in the long run.

Who will call the shots? Most of today's space activities, from launching communications satellites to planetary exploration, are done by government funded and run space programs. Also, since no government has embarked on a program of colonizing space, it doesn't look as though they'll use the infrastructure they have to start any colonization. Of course, political forces can change, so these predictions are predicated on the status quo in NASA and other space agencies.

If governments stay out of the picture initially, this is no guarantee that they won't get involved when things take off. Of course, some people think that big corporations will dominate colonization. Given that the larger corporations tend to operate hand-in-hand with the government – often to curtail competition and to get subsidies – this might be a problem. The solution, for those interested in making sure the high frontier is a free one, is to try to drive government out of space. The less government there is up there, the fewer favors there are to be handed out.

For those who have a problem conceiving of how space colonization would enhance freedom, look at the following situation on Earth and in space. On Earth, real estate is currently easily accessible, while in space it's very inaccessible (under the current controls and space programs). However, there's very little real estate on Earth that isn't claimed and controlled by some government. In space, there's very little that is claimed and almost none that is controlled by any government. Also, as one expands out into space – e.g., as better transportation and life support technology becomes available – the harder it is for centralized control. This does not rule out local tyrannies, but it does merit looking into. On Earth, as better transportation technologies become available (in the past, these included trains, planes, and automobiles) because of the limited space centralized control has been enhanced. Thus, the same technological innovations can lead to a liberating effect in space, while on Earth they have merely up the ante with fighting the State.

Another thing we can do to keep the high frontier open is to start investing in it ourselves, either by arguing and petitioning against government space programs, regulations, etc. or by banding together with other space enthusiasts to create associations to promote nongovernmental uses of space, perhaps by building our own rockets and colonies. As an example of how space can become really cheap, look at all the Cold War ICBMs stockpiled. Currently, there's talk of destroying them outright, but wouldn't it be better to sell them as space vehicles? This is not as off-the-wall as it sounds. Modified Titans (an old series of US ICBMs) launched the Viking and Voyager missions.

In this, there are some further hints at the answers to when and how it will be done and who will call the shots. If we are willing to invest our resources to this goal and to convince others to do so or, at least, to let us do so without interference, we may be able to call the shots.

Will humans colonize space? Barring a major catastrophe or radical change in human nature, I believe it will be done. Humans are already exploring space, and support for this, while not unanimous, is quite large. Of course, there's no way I know to prove space colonization is inevitable. Nor does inevitability makes it right or worthy of our support.

It's especially worthy of the attention of long-range thinking freedom lovers because it provides a chance to leave some of these governments behind and to expand as rapidly as possible – at the technological limits – away from oppressive governments. This can't be done on Earth. At best, one can make small pockets of freedom or run and hide, unless the time and effort is expended trying to change enough peoples' minds to reform society.

The above ideas can be used to create science fiction, but I hope the reader is more inclined toward real world applications. As an exercise in imagination , what do you think space colonization will be like? I invite you to write me on the matter.

Notes:

1. Solar sails are pushed by light. This can be light directly from the sun or from some other source, such as lasers. See Starsailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel by Louis Friedman and Project Solar Sail edited by Arthur C. Clarke. Nuclear fission rockets work by heating up a propellant with a reactor and ejecting it in a way similar to regular rockets. Nuclear fusion rockets run by fusing the propellant before it's ejected, releasing more energy than fission rockets, yielding a higher thrust. The Orion thrust, first imagined by Ulam in the late 1940s, works by dropping nuclear bombs and putt-putt-ing along on the reaction. It can deliver speeds up to 10% that of light – about 3000 times faster than the Apollo moon shots! Orion is a nearly off-the-shelf technology that can make space travel cheaper (there are a lot of nuclear weapons to be used) and faster.

2. I thank Anders Monsen for his many helpful comments.

[Philip Coates]

It's neither immature nor juvenile, but a good summary of the different ways of moving off the planet that I've seen scattered in many books and by writers such as Niven, Pournelle, etc. Not every idea will work. Some haven't been even invented (trans-human) and you have to wonder if the interest will be there.

The whole movement of any significant numbers of people probably won't happen unless population begins to pinch or resources become cheaper to get in space and not fight gravity than digging two miles deep in the earth or the oceans (mining the asteroids, solar power satellites, diamonds from the outer moons). For the non-technical reader, though, a lot of these methods will be hard to make plausible in a short piece. Space elevators. Light sails. Rotating space colonies,etc. All take a lot of explanation.

Edited May 20, 2010 by Philip Coates

[syrakusos]

It's neither immature nor juvenile, but a good summary of ...

From the guy with Quent Cordaire's "Apollo at Go" for his avatar. I agree on all points, both with Dan's original essay and your views on it. Right now, I am reading The New England Merchants in the Seventeeth Century by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard University Press, 1979). For my final criminology class, Global Crime, I wrote my paper on the future of capitalism. That required writing first about the history of capitalism. I am not alone in my generation in growing up expecting the Jetsons. In 1960, I certainly thought that by 2010, we would have space stations, colonies on Luna, and probably the first colony on Mars. Progress seemed so easy.

Mention "space colonization" to libertarians and other freedom lovers and you are likely to get one of two responses. The first and most prevalent is, in my experience, for them point out how impractical and "futuristic" the idea is. Budgets for space programs are seen as too big for individuals or private companies to fund. The second response is, in my experience, to wonder whether you are some sort of statist. After all, only governments have space programs.

Introductions are what they are, so it is easy to quibble with the broad generalizations. My own experience is that anyone interested in space colonization is likely libertarian to a lesser to greater degree. Also, I do not parse out libertarians from the general population in terms of intelligence, ability, character, personality, diligence, courage, beauty, or any other metric. I will grant that "freedom lovers" advocate for "freedom" but if you talk to any more than a dozen of these people, you see that what they claim to believe is only window dressing for who they are -- and like all people, libertarians are people. They are not especially insightful, or creative, or moral or ethical or dependable. In fact, it is pretty easy to find so-called "libertarians" who advocate theories that I find highly questionable. Last year at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, I worked the LP booth, and one of the Ron Paul workers said that the Federal Reserve is immoral because only the government has the right to create money. Maybe he was new to this...

Anyway, if you want to bring space colonies to libertarians, what you get is that the people who are intelligent, creative, bold, and (likely) educated (or self-educated) in science, will respond favorably, while the others want you to sign a petition demanding President Obama's birth certificate.

Long out of print --

Title: Space colonization: An annotated bibliography

Author: Michael E Marotta

ISBN: B0006XYFHU

32 Pages

Publisher: Loompanics Unlimited

Binding: Unknown Binding

Publication date: 1979

[BaalChatzaf]

Where are the flying cars? Where are the shoulder boards and the capes?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

Could people of the sixteenth century have predicted colonization in the seventeenth? Likely not, but neither were they trying to. The predicting was impossible to them. They did not see the world this way. They lived for the immediate present with their eyes on an eternal reward. Whatever we do not, one aspect we do is prediction. One invention that lead to true capitalism -- as opposed to merely have merchants, as perhaps all societies do -- was the arithmetical ability to predict over time. According to fiduciaries market theoretician Peter L. Bernstein (read Wikipedia here and Volokh here and Bernsteins own website here), Pascal and Fermat created capitalism.

I recommend also Bruce Sterling's Schizmatrix for a novel about the interplay of genetically altered "Shapers" and their "Mech" opponents in near-solar space in our relatively near future (50 years in the story, probably 100 as it seems today).

O'Neill and Heppenheimer both speak of living in asteroids as they are being mined. One leads to the other. Large, constructed space stations have always been possible. We -- all space launch facilities -- could actually boost that second stage or third stage or the Shuttle Main Tank -- into orbit. We just choose not to for economic reasons, not for engineering contraints. The Space Shuttle Main Tank has always been an unnecessary loss. They could have been sold to colony corporations, whether farming or pharming or manufacturing or communication or Earth monitoring, etc., etc.

Robert L. Park was the government lobbyist for the American Physical Society. His Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud argues against space colonization and even human exploration of space. I do not agree with his major premise. However, among the facts he marshalls is the complete lack of anything profitable from the space program. Honest. I mean, yes, we have communiction satellites, but no one lives on them. He pointed to space manufacturing, zero-gravity methods, pharmaceuticals, cells cultures, etc., etc., etc. None of it has returned a dime.

The same story is known from the colonization of America. It was hugely unprofitable to European investors. I refered to the book, The New England Merchants in the Seventeeth Century by Bernard Bailyn. I also recommend The Man Who Found the Money: John Stewart Kennedy and the Financing of the Western Railroads by Saul Engelbourg and Leonard Bushkoff. Kennedy was eventually the banker for J. J. Hill. Kennedy was a merchant, a banker, a merchant-banker, as well as a board director on several railroads. Want to make a small fortune in railroads? Start with a large fortune. (Old joke.)

So, too with space colonies. We will go there when we do for reasons of our own. But if you are selling the idea to people here and now, you are selling snake oil. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this time it will be different.

Finally, consider that America caused World War I. All the smart people came here. All the hopeful people came here. All the individualists came here. Not everyone who came was smart or hopeful or individualist. (A -> B does not mean B -> A.) But we drained Europe's best, leaving behind the true riffraff of church, family, and state. Just a thought...

Edited May 20, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[dan2100]

It's neither immature nor juvenile,

Thanks.

but a good summary of the different ways of moving off the planet that I've seen scattered in many books and by writers such as Niven, Pournelle, etc. Not every idea will work.

When I wrote it, I wanted to counter the view that space settlement meant giant cities in space -- the sort of thing that almost bakes in huge budgets and a very centralized approach.

Some haven't been even invented (trans-human) and you have to wonder if the interest will be there.

I actually think it won't matter as much. If some of things come about -- what might be called enabling technologies or, more generally, enabling conditions -- then much of it will happen without anyone necessarily planning, say, the colonization of Mars.

The whole movement of any significant numbers of people probably won't happen unless population begins to pinch or resources become cheaper to get in space and not fight gravity than digging two miles deep in the earth or the oceans (mining the asteroids, solar power satellites, diamonds from the outer moons). For the non-technical reader, though, a lot of these methods will be hard to make plausible in a short piece. Space elevators. Light sails. Rotating space colonies,etc. All take a lot of explanation.

I don't think it requires a significant number of people to have bona fide space settlement -- just populations living permanently off world. They might be rather small and, no doubt, the vast majority of people might continue to live on Earth and never venture into space. It's quite imaginable that, say, Earth's population might reach 20 billion in the next century and, should space settlement start up, the off world population might be mere tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands in the same time frame. I wouldn't consider that -- and doubt you would either -- tiny amount of people to be non-settlement.

Also, my guess is that while there will be settlement projects, most of these will fail -- even of the ones that go get off the ground. Instead, I think the best hope for settlement is things like space tourism -- ventures likely to bring down the cost of manned space travel (as well as put people into space; space tourism almost is impossible without putting people there -- whereas almost all space endeavors can be done robotically or via some form of teleoperation). I believe settlement will grow out of tourism and the like. (I can imagine, say, this or that space hotel becoming obsolete and people just continuing to live there -- maybe as squatters -- and this becoming a de facto settlement -- even if no one intended it that way. This might be similar to how a whaling station grows into a town -- even if no one ever intended to move there permanently, raise families, and the like.) Of course, this is my guess, but it seems much closer to much of what happened on Earth -- piecemeal moves resulting in big changes over a long time frame.

[Philip Coates]

MM: I am not alone in my generation in growing up expecting the Jetsons. In 1960, I certainly thought that by 2010, we would have space stations, colonies on Luna, and probably the first colony on Mars. Progress seemed so easy.

Browsing old bookstores I discovered stacks of Life Magazine and Reader's Digest articles from the 50's on how we'd have flying cars and the houses would be all glass or plexiglass and would rotate during the day to follow the sun.

That was at the close of a century of staggeringly fast progress...and [warning: rant alert] just before big government/the regulatory state had gotten to the point of really choking off progress with environmental impact statements and licensing and prohibitions and having to wear reflective clothes, helmets, and shin guards before taking a crap and before protecting big, established institutions from the innovators and the dreamers.

It was before bold new frontiers, and great advances (except in computers and a few other areas) became illegal and were hamstrung.

Edited May 20, 2010 by Philip Coates

[anonrobt]

MM: I am not alone in my generation in growing up expecting the Jetsons. In 1960, I certainly thought that by 2010, we would have space stations, colonies on Luna, and probably the first colony on Mars. Progress seemed so easy.

Browsing old bookstores I discovered stacks of Life Magazine and Reader's Digest articles from the 50's on how we'd have flying cars and the houses would be all glass or plexiglass and would rotate during the day to follow the sun.

That was at the close of a century of staggeringly fast progress...and [warning: rant alert] just before big government/the regulatory state had gotten to the point of really choking off progress with environmental impact statements and licensing and prohibitions and having to wear reflective clothes, helmets, and shin guards before taking a crap and before protecting big, established institutions from the innovators and the dreamers.

It was before bold new frontiers, and great advances (except in computers and a few other areas) became illegal and were hamstrung.

If the government had followed Van Braun's notion of the space station FIRST, then the rockets outward from it, those views of the 50's may well had come to pass - but the politics demanded a show, so it was a blast-off to the moon, no midway between, with the current result...

[dan2100]

MM: I am not alone in my generation in growing up expecting the Jetsons. In 1960, I certainly thought that by 2010, we would have space stations, colonies on Luna, and probably the first colony on Mars. Progress seemed so easy.

Browsing old bookstores I discovered stacks of Life Magazine and Reader's Digest articles from the 50's on how we'd have flying cars and the houses would be all glass or plexiglass and would rotate during the day to follow the sun.

That was at the close of a century of staggeringly fast progress...and [warning: rant alert] just before big government/the regulatory state had gotten to the point of really choking off progress with environmental impact statements and licensing and prohibitions and having to wear reflective clothes, helmets, and shin guards before taking a crap and before protecting big, established institutions from the innovators and the dreamers.

It was before bold new frontiers, and great advances (except in computers and a few other areas) became illegal and were hamstrung.

If the government had followed Van Braun's notion of the space station FIRST, then the rockets outward from it, those views of the 50's may well had come to pass - but the politics demanded a show, so it was a blast-off to the moon, no midway between, with the current result...

If your view is correct, then why didn't the Soviets succeed -- as their manned program went to a space station. Yet it seems they stuck there.

My view is government involvement in this area has driven costs up -- just as it has in education and healthcare. By driving up the costs of space travel and locking a few big aerospace contractors in place, innovations are stifled and economies were never realized like in other fields. At least, this is what I think is the cause of the seeming stagnation in this area -- and not any particular program.

[dan2100]

Mention "space colonization" to libertarians and other freedom lovers and you are likely to get one of two responses. The first and most prevalent is, in my experience, for them point out how impractical and "futuristic" the idea is. Budgets for space programs are seen as too big for individuals or private companies to fund. The second response is, in my experience, to wonder whether you are some sort of statist. After all, only governments have space programs.

Introductions are what they are, so it is easy to quibble with the broad generalizations. My own experience is that anyone interested in space colonization is likely libertarian to a lesser to greater degree. Also, I do not parse out libertarians from the general population in terms of intelligence, ability, character, personality, diligence, courage, beauty, or any other metric. I will grant that "freedom lovers" advocate for "freedom" but if you talk to any more than a dozen of these people, you see that what they claim to believe is only window dressing for who they are -- and like all people, libertarians are people. They are not especially insightful, or creative, or moral or ethical or dependable. In fact, it is pretty easy to find so-called "libertarians" who advocate theories that I find highly questionable. Last year at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, I worked the LP booth, and one of the Ron Paul workers said that the Federal Reserve is immoral because only the government has the right to create money. Maybe he was new to this...

Anyway, if you want to bring space colonies to libertarians, what you get is that the people who are intelligent, creative, bold, and (likely) educated (or self-educated) in science, will respond favorably, while the others want you to sign a petition demanding President Obama's birth certificate.

Long out of print --

Title: Space colonization: An annotated bibliography

Author: Michael E Marotta

ISBN: B0006XYFHU

32 Pages

Publisher: Loompanics Unlimited

Binding: Unknown Binding

Publication date: 1979

I'll have to look for your book.

I agree with you about libertarians. But regarding space enthusiasts, my experience is most of them are statists. They see little wrong with government -- i.e., forced -- funding of their pet space projects. In fact, they often clamour for it. But then I haven't done a good survey of them, so perhaps more than I believe are libertarians and maybe some just haven't drawn out all the conclusions of their core principles.

My experience, too, of people self-identify themselves as libertarians is similar to yours: they usually aren't libertarian at all. And, yes, this is because they don't even bother to understand a basically simple idea. (Thus, your Fed critic who seems to believe the government doesn't have any say in money now and that, somehow, were it to have control things would be better.) This has become more of a problem, for me, as the word itself has become chic among statists of the Republican persuasion.

[syrakusos]

Some haven't been even invented (trans-human) and you have to wonder if the interest will be there.

... The whole movement of any significant numbers of people probably won't happen unless population begins to pinch or resources become cheaper to get in space and not ...

I don't think it requires a significant number of people to have bona fide space settlement -- just populations living permanently off world. They might be ...

Also, my guess is that while there will be settlement projects ...

Looking at actual colonizations and comparing and contrasting might provide some useful information.

The Greeks colonized the Mediterranean as a result of several kinds of social forces. Traditionally, at about 750 to 480 BCE in the archaic era, the folkway was for a 30-year old man to marry an 18-year old woman. He had to wait because he was taking care of his parents until he inherited their farm. This created pressure to find new lands. They did so by sea, establishing towns from the Crimea to Spain along both the north and south shores. Nice (Nike) in France and Benghazi (Berenike) in Tunisia were both Greek colonies. Once upon a time, the men of Sparta went off on an extended war campaign and they came home to a new crop of babies. When the lads came of age, they took their common complaint of discrimination to the town council which outfitted them with two ships. They settled in southern Italy at Taras (Tarento today), where other Greeks had built Sybaris, Metapontum and other towns as far north as Neopolis (Naples). When the Ionian Revolt collapsed -- in truth a factor in its collapse -- citizens of Miletos (and other towns) packed up and rowed away in the night, founding new towns elsewhere.

In an article for The Celator, I called Champagne "The Athens of the Middle Ages." The area was colonized about 1000 as men from existing towns sought new lands. Nominally serfs, many of them acquired their freedom this way. Within a hundred years, Troyes, Provins, Aube, and other towns developed new legal structures better suited to trade and commerce. In another two hundred years, the king at Paris sought the prize for himself, married it, and then taxed the great fairs out of existence.

It is technically incorrect to say that the "Pilgrims" settled at Plymouth Rock. The name "Pilgrims" actually belonged to a differnt charter corporation. In 1620, there were several such and they lived and died, some of them born here, while from 1620 through 1630 through 1640 and 1650 until 1660, they worked and failed to find profits in fur trapping, fishing, ship building, export of raw materials, transporting, farming, and mining. New hopefuls arrived, discovered that the place planned for them was unsuitable (or totally and completely unsuitable) and found someplace else. Once they landed, adventurers pushed inland and were lucky to find modest and only temporary success.

I already cited The Man Who Found the Money: John Stewart Kennedy and the Financing of the Western Railroads by Saul Engelbourg and Leonard Bushkoff. Attempts to fund American enterprises from Europe were listerally risky. Many failed; some succeeded. In fact, Henry Ford failed to produce an actual automobile and his investors sold the company to Leland and the works became Cadillac. Ford went on to start another company.

The idea that you can get "resources" shipped to you just by paying for them is another example of muscle-mysticism. Schumpeter argued in Imperialism that the clamor for colonies came from the factory workers and middle class, not the industrialists.

Again, we should look at actual colonizations first and see if there are interesting commonalities and important differences, and just what those might be.

Edited May 21, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[tjohnson]

I like Clark's Rendevous with Rama idea. A huge rotating cylinder that would simulate gravity on the "wall". You could have a community that could live for generations while travelling in space.

[dan2100]

I like Clark's Rendevous with Rama idea. A huge rotating cylinder that would simulate gravity on the "wall". You could have a community that could live for generations while travelling in space.

I don't think Clarke originated that idea, but the problem I see with it is size. It's sort of like saying, as pilgrims went to colonize British North America that they want to live in giant mega-cities and focused on doing this rather than all the middle steps. Had they done so, I think most of them would still be sitting in Britain arguing over how to make the correct large metropolis and looking for the hughe amount of funding necessary to do it. (Granted, in Clarke's series, this was, I reckon, supposed to be the product of an alien civilization. He didn't, if I recall correctly, depict how Rama itself came about or what the in between steps were for that alien civilization.)

[moonus111]

Awesome article! I found it through a friend of mine Aron Sora. You said a lot of things I think about every day!