Re: [OT] Bureau of Relocation

G'day guys,

I haven't been paying that much attention sorry, so if this question has

arisen before sorry. Can someone please give me a very brief, very quick

explanation (offlist will be fine so as not to rehash) why there is this

perception that space travel will be so cripplingly expensive in
relative 
terms (I'm afraid my glancing hasn't cleared up why there's the
assumption 
that given we get FTL at all that its going to cost the stars to get to
them).

 >Second, there's resistance, as with moving a physical object.
 >Space Travel is expensive. Space Travel is dangerous.  Space
 > travel is fraught with hardships, discomfort, loneliness.  If you
 > go, you may never see Earth, or even the outside of the ship,
 >again.  When you get there, you're on your own, living in those
 >terrible prefab housing units, eking a living (such as it is) from
 >a hostile new world.

Funny as it may seem there must be something attractive in it otherwise 
places like Oz wouldn't exist at all. And its not always the case that
you 
need to be rich to get the passage, they often had the 'soddingly poor, 
sitting in the bilge' class just so as to make the extra money on ever 
voyage possible. You may also underestimate how many people would be 
willing to slave on the boiling surface of planet xyz if it gave them a 
chance for a new life afterwards, happened out here quite a bit at the
start.

Cheers

Beth - ps found it amusing that the example you gave of a place people 
wouldn't want to go fits Australia very well (hot with venomous
wildlife) ;)

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Elizabeth Fulton
c/o CSIRO Division of Marine Research
GPO Box 1538
HOBART
TASMANIA 7001
AUSTRALIA
Phone (03) 6232 5018 International +61 3 6232 5018
Fax 03 6232 5053 International +61 3 6232 5053

email: beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au