Re: Building a map of habitable space

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How long did things like the gold rush take to get started?
 
As soon as unmanned probes brought back the hint of exploitable minerals
all sorts of corporations and every country that could would be flinging
groups of pioneers in a wagon at potentially viable planets looking for
anything exploitable.
 
There's quantium 40 in them there hills ye haaargh.
 
With the potential for mamoth returns and little in the way of
government regulation private industry would be quick to fill the needs
of potential exporation customers. Countries that tried to put too much
regularion in the way of private exportation would find themselves out
of the race and people would all be launching out of equatorial tax
havens (the liberian registration of space exploration).
 
Other countries would then need to work out how to make money from those
countries that did make the space travel perhaps with component supply
or eathside manufacturing.
 
The thing many authors under rate is the time to set up a colony. If you
go from orbiting colony barge to habitable city there;s a lot of work to
do and the colonists wold start with nothing. If it wasn't planned well
it cold look like a plane crash in the mongolian desert.