The Seasteading Institute

Reply To: sda1950

[quote=sda1950]

[quote=i_is_j_smith]

To colonize space, even in LEO, you are going to have to lift hundreds of thousands of metric tons of basic materials out of the gravity well. And that will not happen with any current lift technologies.

[/quote]

Lifting that much is just not financially feasable, even at $100 / lb. You need to build the station using insitu materials, asteroids for instance, and only launch equipment too difficult to make in space.

Steve

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They've recently discovered what seem to be massive ice deposits at the lunar poles

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/multimedia/feature_ice_like_deposits.html

If the LCROSS ejecta is an indication, the ices have carbon and nitrogen as well as hydrogen and oxygen.

For a number of reasons this makes a lunar base more plausible.