wayne: The “dude” has been banned as spam.

For one thing, British colonization of North America was a side show, a small expense to the Crown and a risky venture for those who put up money. It was first and foremost only to those who tried to found the colonies, and their families. “State of the art” ship building satisfied transport needs for colonization and for commerce. The business of Great Britain neither rose nor fell on the results of the North American colonies, especially in 15-anything. Great Britain was an agrarian society, finding its way out of a feudal system where might meant right, and ridden by religious wars.

By contrast, Spain’s great threat to Britain was financed by the profit of looting Central and South America, accompanied by slavery, genocide and atrocity. Like Rome, the Spanish empire was financed by straight-forward theft, before or after murder, rose quickly, and rotted from within. It was a world-changer from the first generation after Columbus found, mm, whatever he found. This too was supported by state of the art technology, in fact, by technology which lagged the art because wealth and established power were content extracting the maximum return from existing, and soon obsolete, technology. The profit was in theft, not finding a better return on investment.

What Spain’s (im)moral quagmire and Great Britain’s small and indifferent steps are both telling us is that watching the Europeans find, exploit, settle and thrive (or not) in the Americas misses the role played by the population of non-Europeans who had wealth to steal, technology and food crops that thrived in various American conditions, and not enough political – military – technological – medical – etc. resources to defend themselves.

The native Americans had arrived themselves by foot or perhaps small boats. Provisions could be found on the journey, abundant resources were available to stone age gatherer-hunters. Anyone brave enough could try, vast investment or special training wasn’t required.

In short. for the initial waves of late stone age immigrants and the later waves of European immigrants, it was *profitable* for an individual to make a self-financed trip in a group as small as a family or two. Once there was permanent settlement, the traveling party didn’t even have to be big enough to support intermarriage. Technology was whatever you had, and only a large ship crossing blue water needed long-shelf-life stored provisions. Its worth noting that transport by water has been and remains the absolutely cheapest way of getting a dozen or two people, a store-able cash crop or shippable live stock, finished goods of art or craft, etc, from point A to point B.

Compare with outer space, or even any location 200 meters above ground level.

Traveling to outer space – 50 miles, up or above, requires gaining 50 miles altitude above sea level. 80-ish km. that’s 9 times the height of the tallest mountains, 6 or 7 times the cruising altitude of a passenger airliner. Humans can’t stay conscious at airliner altitude without artificially increasing pressure, even breathing pure oxygen. Its really cold, so a completely artificial environment is needed. At 1/6 or 1/7 of the distance to the edge of space, its already uninhabitable, and it only gets worse as you continue to climb.

So at lower altitudes, non-free-fall, you need a structure holding you up or you need power pushing you up. Expensive. At higher altitude, where free-fall is possible, you need 17,000mph speed, nearly 30,000kmph. 30,000 kmph = 30,000,000 meters per hour, and an hour is 60 minutes, so you need to cover 500,000 meters, 500 km, per minute. 8km per SECOND, to keep in orbit.

So the choice is expend energy to get to 8km/s at 80+ km altitude, or expend constantly to stay up, or build a structure to support yourself. By 7km altitude, you’ll be needed a pressurized and heated environment, a box or a can or a bag to live in. A big hamster ball.

Lets say that the altitude is a given- your there, by some means. How do you eat? How do you get water? How do you make enough money to pay your cell phone bill, since that’s your one connection to the rest of the world (oops- you’re too high- don’t forget a satellite phone) How do you sustain yourself? How do you pay your phone bill? You have to carry all the equipment to grow food and recycle waste, or make so much money you can pay, oh, $10.000 a day for food and water to be sent up?

The exchange between you and some of the audience after your presentation was especially interesting. While you are an extraordinary writer with unusual perspective, you have not had to work technically inside the system and thus cannot have the most accurate concept of how the space program does things (or doesn’t work).

I am sure you were not aware of the distinguished personages at the meeting who took exception to some of your opinions. For example, the man who wanted space exploration to be an international endeavor is a PhD NASA civil service engineer who has taken part in every program since Gemini.

The gentleman in the back of the room who adversely commented on the role of privatization in space was once the head of the Engineering Directorate at Johnson Space Center. Later he served for years as Boeing’s Chief Engineer for the International Space Station.

I’m reading your book “Leaving Earth” and noticed your quote by Winston Churchill in the front regarding Russia. Ironically the most vocal opponent of your ideas at the AIAA meeting was Winston Churchill’s grandson!

The Russian lady who took umbrage at your stereotypical impression of Russians has a distinguished background at NASA and is involved in technical relations between our two countries.

NASA has always used private industry; it’s just that the current contracts are not set up properly. It’s all too easy to make steady money by prolonging the status quo on any NASA project while NASA gold plates the job with a plethora of lavish extras until it gets too expensive or impractical to continue.

You can read all about it in this article by me at:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1635/1

Best wishes, Jim McLane