[C M Weller]

Asteroids are weird, when compared to the cohesive wholes of planets. There’s the rocks, which may have dubious integrity, depending on their origin. Then you have the rubble asteroids that are basically balls of dirt that decided to hang out together. And lastly, you have the solid iron lumps.

As far as structural integrity’s concerned, bank on the iron lumps.

Unfortunately, they’re also the ones that are a nastard to mine. Structural integrity is a bludgeon that works at both ends.

My thought is, why not make your colony material by mining the exterior? Wrap the metaphorical top blanket over your mining crew and carry on expanding from that point. No need to expend labour hollowing out a living space, just kind of tack it on top.

And as for the structural integrity? We might learn a lot from the microstructure of egg shells.

Hear me out on this one. It’s very difficult to crush an egg because its microstructure is resistant to outside pressure. On an asteroid, it’s inside pressure that is the majority problem, so you need two “eggshells”. One inside-out egg to resist the pressure of human-friendly atmosphere, and an additional right-ways egg to resist any incoming pressure from micrometeors or other impacts.

Sure, it’s a lot more engineering in the beginning, but I believe it’ll work out as a least-cost solution to the asteroid mining problem.

And once you have a base, you can herd the other kinds of asteroids in for processing.

…or am I too far fetched for Star Trek? 😉

[C M Weller]

I just ran some numbers and vertical farming is going to have to be the way to go. Assuming a stable population of five hundred[Minimum population necessary for long-term thinking], each needing four acres of flat farm, you’d wind up with an internal radius of about two kilometres. Just for growing food.

Obviously, farming need not be defined as it was back when “four acres and a mule” were the minimum requirements for self-sustainability. We can already grow cultured meat from any genetic sample [I believe I saw something where you could obtain “celebrity sausage” made from tissue cultured from celebrity donors… it may have been a hoax, but give humanity time] so protein is not going to be an ethical or pragmatic issue.

I see chickens as being one of those ‘portable everywhere’ animals, though. We do rather like their eggs. Perhaps in OceanSteads, the wild versions would be more practical. Plus they are also a source of fertiliser. The caveat being that they like seedlings.

You’d have to work out some verity of stable and edible ecosystem. Pests come with us anyway, so of course we’d get flies, roaches, mice and rats. Cats and/or terriers can control the mammalian vermin, and spiders *should* come along anyway to check the insects…

I do like the aquaponics idea, though. Free range fish working in the bilges etc. You could plausibly rig a pump to bring up the fishy manure, too.

There’s even some edible aquatic plants that can help with everything, too, if I recall correctly.

[C M Weller]

Have you heard of styrofoam concrete? It’s where they make concrete with styrofoam replacing the rocks. It’s light, cheap and flexible, and may just have the extra buoyancy you’d need for this kind of project.

The other alternative would be using pumice stone in your concrete mix… but the disadvantage with pumice is that it erodes very easily. [Come to think of it, concrete is kind of soluble, too… you’d have to treat the whole lot with some kind of protective layer before launch]

The advantage of the sea is that there’s so much of it. You could plausibly move the entire population of the world into spheres like this and there would still be room for twice that again.

With Nature Energy, all the political posturing with regards to limited resources would be rendered (almost) moot [I say ‘almost’ because people in power adore the Status Quo]. Nations may be limited to the population of the globe and, since they’d be mostly self-sufficient, there’d be little need for national rivalry.

You’d get thousands of political microcosms where the best interests lie in the maintenance of the sphere. The environment within would be more important than -say- political campaign contributions. The effects of negligent actions immediately noticeable and undeniable.

I may play with this idea further.

[C M Weller]

Well, if you want to be completely accurate, your ‘valve’ already exists: https://www.newmalecontraception.org/risug/ [with the bonus that it also destroys STD’s]

As it stands, it’s day surgery and not easily switched back and forth, but one can imagine an implanted shunt to perform the honours and an attachable ‘on’ or ‘off’ syringe.

The hue and cry against this is how much testing is being done and whether or not it’s safe for the men. No such concerns were raised against The Pill when it burst into the social scene, IIRC. The arguments against The Pill were that “she could be lying about being on it in order to trap men”. [This sort of nonsense never seems to matter in third world countries, where the routine and unasked sterilisation of brown people barely turns a hair]

I was of the understanding that this was a site dedicated to people who want to write optimistic futures. You must get very tired of challenging everyone who joins this conversation…

But since you’re concerned about the “horrendous poverty” and “deplorable living conditions”, the cause is not overpopulation. The symptom is overpopulation.

Palliative care rarely does anything for a dying patient.

The cause of such horrible conditions is colonisation. People barging in, planting a flag, taking over all the good resources and then blaming the natives for raiding the rubbish tins. When a native population is exiled from its previous place, you can expect them to act like refugees, scrabbling for whatever they can get. You can expect them to grab for whatever brass ring they can reach, regardless of the alleged legality of the metaphorical ring. Thus, you have crime – at least in the eyes of the conquerers – as the natives desperately seek to ‘win’ against a set of invaders who repeatedly stack the odds against them.

They have poor health, because the natives have to fight foreign diseases and the conquerers limit access to the medicines that could improve their lives. And with poor health, stalking hand-in-hand, comes high infant mortality. The only solution available is to have as many kids as possible in the hopes that a few will survive disease, bad diet, criminal activity and the casual brutality of a police force endorsed by the colonists in order to look after them in their old age, because there is no such thing as colonial-endorsed care for ageing natives.

You don’t need to look very far to find the resultant mess. Every conquered country has the “seedy” areas where the disempowered are forced to reside. They might hate you for visiting there. They’ve seen faces like yours every time someone hurts them or their families. They’ve faced down faces like yours yelling at them because their command of your language may not be up to your high standards[Ultimately because the conquerers also restrict access to what they deem to be a “proper” education, and refuse to learn the native languages]. Be prepared if you want to “get real”.

Forgive the snark, but I rather strenuously object to being challenged about my knowledge and skills by someone who seemingly thinks that sterilising people is the ultimate solution to problems that originate from other causes.

[C M Weller]

Here’s one question: Why must there be manual control at all?

It’s the future. We can do what we want.

It would be just as easy to posit a fertility control with neural links integrated into the brains and senses of those who have it. Perhaps with some variety of transhumanist visual cue… All you’d need is a passphrase and to read and mentally click ‘ok’ on all the warnings.

[I don’t always focus on how we got there in my stories, I’m more interested in the wrinkles that living there can provide. Wrinkles make for better stories, anyway.  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/CMWeller if you want to check my stuff out]

[C M Weller]

1) Men already use sex to enforce power
2) Men also already use reproduction to enforce power
3) Men already fake using protection because it “feels better” without giving a fig for their partner

A vasectomy valve would only make things more difficult for those on the wrong end of the power dynamic. [eg: “He said he had his reproduction turned off.”/”She’s lying, that brat ain’t mine.”]

Besides, vasectomies don’t stop STD’s.

And FYI – women don’t want the power to be switched. Women just want it to be equal. The fact that women can work and vote and are no longer viewed as the property of a man has done surprisingly little to the power dynamics between the genders.

As long as there’s a cultural infection of entitlement amongst men, the vasectomy valve wouldn’t change much. It would merely allow the really scummy ones to be incredibly more scummy to more ladies with the repercussions being incredibly delayed.

In other words, we need the respect, consideration and shared decision making to happen first.

[C M Weller]

[For those who are lost, of course. I see you’ve figured it out 🙂 ]

Go to your Profile page and, on the left hand side of your profile, there should be a number of little links. Just below the main, grey bar, there’s a “Change Avatar” link which enables you to -guess what?- change your profile picture. It can be anything you like, especially if you feel that you have a marvellous face for radio.

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