Re: [OT] Bureau of Relocation

I've been thinking a bit about this, the planet to orbit is trivial
in the published universe.  Why?

Well, lets see, we have antigravity.  If it is sturdy enough to be
used in a tank it will be used in the civilian world.

With antigravity you can basicly turn electricity into height.	Let's
see, the formula for potential energy is:  mgh (IIRC).

So, assume each colonist needs 10 (metric) tons of gear to get started
and we need to lift it to, oh, say 100Km.  That would be:

1E6m * 10m/sec2 * 1E4Kg, or about 1E11J  A Joule is 1Watt/Second

1E11/3.6E6 = 2.8Kw-Hours.  Even assuming 10% efficiency that's still
only 28Kw hours to orbit.  Pretty cheap.  The real cost comes in
moving from here to there through hyper, but how much that costs
is PSB.  It just needs to be low enough that colonisation is withing
reach of governments, corporations, and religious fanatics.  I would
guess that in the standard history the cost of the equipment is much
more than the transportation costs.  

Of course, on the pull end is untouched resources, interesting 
environments that may have commercial uses, freedom of thought,
and land for the taking.

Roger (Feel free to check my math, I haven't done this since
       my last Physics class years ago and may have made a mistake.)