🚀 go-pugleaf

\Mars will be the only real place for a large colony, but then again,
/if there isn't anything there that's very interesting (like life or
\fossils) I can't see large colonies being placed up there.  

You overlook the asteroids. A very big mistake.

\Seems like the future will see expanding development of robotic systems
/that will be used to explore every planet and moon, at a vastly 
\reduced cost over sending humans.  

But human costs could be lowered greatly too... in which case someone
might go just for the heck of it. Britian would probably be willing to
pay to send the current set of royals, one way...

\Maybe in the next 100-200 years biology will advance to the point
/where Venus could be altered with microbes.  Change the atmosphere
\so SOMETHING could live there.  It would be interesting to see what
/could live there if the temperature was reduced.

Actually, as has been pointed out before on this forum, energy concerns
make attempts to alter Venus untenable. _But_ that does not mean:

\I think science fiction has given people a false sense of the possible.

Not really. If anything, people have a too narrow sense of the possible.

\The space travel fiction of over 100 years ago neglected things like
/radio and computer electronics, and required a travelling human.
\TEchnology has superseded the human, and the information can be 
/returned much more efficiently. 

Information... that's not quite what we're after. I can read travel
book after travel book about New Orleans, none of which are likely
to convey the experience of living there. 

\The urge to colonize the universe seems to come from an urge for 
/terretorial conquest that has been with us for a long time.  It is
\interesting how old themes are constantly repeated in the present.
/It's too bad we can't interest some of our race (Serbians, Saddam, etc.) 
\in coveting lunar instead of earthly real estate.  

1. I can visit New Orleans and enjoy it without wanting to conquer
it. Exploration and colonization are not equivalent to conquest per
se: the europeans had been in the northern part of the New World 
for at least a hundred years (and maybe more, depending on how far
back before Columbus you're willing to go: The Basque are shifty and
conniving in this matter) without any serious conflict with the
natives.

2. The Serbians, and Saddam, don't really want land. They want power.
If they can't kill or maim people in the process of taking said land,
or otherwise strengthen their power, they aren't interested. They could
do so in space exploration, but the rest of us are slightly hostile to
the idea.

Phil "No Fly Zone, No boost zone" Fraering


-- 
Phil Fraering         |"...Who in the valley shed the poison tear
318/365-5418          |no one knows...
pgf@srl02.cacs.usl.edu|An old myth of a mythical hero..."