Re: [OT] Bureau of Relocation

>From: "Laserlight" <laserlight@quixnet.net>
>Reply-To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
>To: <gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU>
>Subject: Re: [OT] Bureau of Relocation
>Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 22:46:29 -0400
>
>Snippage.
>
>
>NO, IT IS NOT.
>
>Now that I have your attention....
>You are making an assumption here.  Space travel _is_
>expensive....at the moment.  But we are not talking about the
>moment, we are talking about the future, and I think we can take
>it as a given (in the canon background) that shipment to orbit
>is going to become about as cheap as air travel is now.

Cheap air travel is relatively recent, since around the end of WWII. 
Before 
that, it was the railroad, which went through it's growing pains.  It's
been 
the same with every modern mode of transportation.

>What are the technical details of making it cheap?  How would I
>know?

Economics will drive it to cheapness as much as technology.  If it were 
merely a matter of technology, every town in the world with enough open 
space would have an international airport.

But the game involves hyperspace jumps, and you don't
>have a problem swallowing that, so why should you strain at
>swallowing relatively inexpensive ground-to-orbit and
>interplanetary travel?

Eventually, nothing.  But we're talking about the colonization period of

space travel - wwe're not talking about going between two established 
places, we're talking about going to somewhere remote and as yet 
uninhabited.  Travel of that sort is much more expensive, relative to 
technology level, than travel between two markets.

>Now, I'm prepared to grant that star travel isn't something that
>just anyone can do on a whim, particularly not at first.  But
>I'm suggesting that when it gets to the point where travel time
>is on the order of a month or so, then colonization is feasible.
>That appears to have been the case, historically.

Feasible is one thing - practical is another.  It won't be enough that
we 
can get there fast, we'll need compelling enough reasons to go there,
and 
for someone to make it affordable. As for the historical case,	it seems
to 
indicate that profits are as important as speed of travel.  Sure, I can 
build a fast ship to get you there. What's in it for me?

> >Which is why most (not all, but MOST) successful colony efforts
>are going to
> >combine both Push AND Pull.
>
>Of course.  Not only to you need a reason to leave, you need a
>place to go to.  Otherwise you'd move to New Zealand, instead of
>another planet.  I don't disagree with most of your analysis.
>But I think you underestimate the lure of freedom.  If you
>offered me a square kilometer of farmland and no federal or
>state regulations or taxes to worry about, I'd sign up so fast
>the paper would smoke.  Okay, maybe it would cost $40K per
>person (I'm figuring that based on roughly 30 airline flights="a
>month's travel"), I could sell the house and have money left
>over to buy starter equipment, so let's go!  Or the army could
>offer it as a benefit--stay in for 20 and you can be discharged
>on New Eden, with your own land.
>

And what's going to compel the government to offer me this fabulous
deal? 
They want a piece of that new place, for resources or strategic import,
or 
whatever.  Again, Push and Pull working together.

Brian Bilderback
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