asteroid habs

Brian said:
Personally, I can see better things to do 
with habitable planets than use them as 
prisons. Stick the convicts in asteroid habs, 
and let regular people do your colonizing.

[Tomb] How about instead we send them 
to hab-less asteroids and let the regular 
people do the colonizing? 

Whereas Roger said:
A different kind of sentence.  Put them in a 
dangerous environment that needs 
minerals extracted.  They are sentanced to 
produce X amount of  mineral at which point
they are set free.  Those with drive that 
could be an asset to society get free 
sooner because they work hard.	Those
that are lazy (or stupid) never return.

[Tomb] Oh Good! Roger wants to let the 
toughest and most driven hardened scum 
back into society! Oh goodie! (The plan is 
something to think on, but I'm not sure 
that letting the nastiest, biggest, toughest, 
etc. back into society first is the best 
idea...). Maybe a more workable version 
would be doing it "by team" and the 
_team_ that got to their target would be 
set free. (Perhaps with some psych 
conditioning to prevent recidivism). That 
would promote (some sort) of community 
or team spirit rather than tough-ass 
individualism. Of course, a team of nasty 
guys might not be so hot to let loose, so 
maybe they are all returned to different 
planets with no contact info for one 
another. 

[Tomb] As for the whole issue of 
men/women on a colony: If you don't want 
kids for the first 2 years, everyone who 
goes (men or women) gets a 24 month 
contraceptive. And you send some fairly 
draconian law enforcement types with a 
fair latitude of power (think Wild West or 
Klondike Gold Rush or Canadian 
Explorations of the West) and let them 
keep the lid on and keep the rougher sorts 
in line. 

[Tomb] As far an Antarctica goes, I think 
the people who get to go there (correct me 
if I'm wrong Beth) are super-select. They 
tend to be carefully picked. If I'm sending 
out 100,000 colonists, I think you have to 
imagine a few bad apples in the bunch. So 
I'm not sure Antarctica is a fair 
comparison. 

---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site
"In God We Trust... on Cold Steel We Depend."