Because link salad will go bad if it's left in the refrigerator too long, here's your Friday edition. Before I get to that, thanks to everybody who congratulated me on my publishing news yesterday. I'm quite pleased with myself. Now, returning to our regularly-scheduled programming:

1) Via Ballon Juice, the blogger Kung Fu Monkey misses ( Read more... )

I wasn't planning for Part 5 of this series, but here goes, with some odd thoughts that didn't fit anywhere else.

orbital stations = cruise shipsThe economics of an orbital hotel would be very similar to a cruise ship. The space constraints are similar (no orbital golf!) and the construction and operating costs are similar. Lunar hotels could be ( Read more... )

In Part 3, I came to the conclusion that once humans decide to stay on the Moon or in orbit, they will be as self-sufficient as possible. So the question is, "why will humans go ( Read more... )

Based on the analysis of Part 1 and Part 2 of colonial economics, a simple factor emerges: if it is cheaper to ship supplies in than to obtain them locally, the supplies are shipped in ( Read more... )

So, in Part 1 of my continuing saga on Space Colonization, I talked about the economics of Antarctic "colonization." Basically, once the research to be done reaches a certain level, setting up a base, as opposed to flying in and out, makes sense ( Read more... )

So, Charles Stross has blogged extensively about how space colonization is not economically viable with foreseeable current technology. He makes a number of arguments, one of which is "call me when people colonize the Gobi Desert."

Well, people did colonize the Gobi - we call them "Mongolians." The immediate comeback to this is oil rigs, ( Read more... )