User talk:Danielravennest/papers/Human Expansion

I had a moment to read this essay and thought it was pretty good. Two things stuck out at me though; in section 7, you discuss three components required for civilization: production capacity, habitation and transportation. I wonder if information storage systems also qualify as a component of civilization. At the most basic level the brain suffices, but as a civilization grows its knowledge base, better information storage (and processing and retrieval) systems are required.(paper, clay tablets, abacuses, mechanical calculators, computers etc.)


 * You are correct that information is a necessary part of a complete system. In the functional breakdown of production, for example, I have: Control Location, Supply Power, Extract Materials, Process Materials, Fabricate Parts, Store Inventory, Assemble Elements, and Grow Organics. The Control function would include human and artificial elements which do the planning and control of the operations, and communicate with the other functions.  The other functions can have their own computers, like a CNC machine tool under fabricate parts nowadays has an internal computer that runs it.  To be a top level component of civilization, information storage would need to be nothing but storage, like a library or cloud data storage.  I do think those are needed, but not at the top level. Danielravennest (discuss • contribs) 14:23, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

The second minor thing I noticed was that you talk about electric propulsion without mentioning the (currently) low thrust it provides. I was under the impression that was a major hindrance in terms of trip time and human space flight. For robots and most cargo it is, of course, just fine, but humans are probably going to be less keen on a 13 month trip to the Moon. NortySpock (discuss • contribs) 02:47, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Under 8.3/Chemical Propulsion I say "The high thrust provided by chemical propulsion is still needed for some near Earth tasks." which implies the electric is low thrust, but I was not explicit under electric. I've corrected that. Thanks for reviewing the draft paper. Danielravennest (discuss • contribs) 14:23, 15 November 2012 (UTC)