You are not logged in.
Why to "orbit" any constructional material? You mean from Earth???
There are > 10 000 000 Near Earth meteoroids with diameter of ~10 meters and mass ~1000 metric tonnes each. Total mass of 10 000 000 000 tonnes. A rotating space colony needs roughly 30 tonnes of "earth" per m2 areal density + 10 tonnes of air ~ 40 000 kg/m2 or only from these little NEOs could be build 250 km2 of rotating colonies...
Offline
Why to "orbit" any constructional material? You mean from Earth???
There are > 10 000 000 Near Earth meteoroids with diameter of ~10 meters and mass ~1000 metric tonnes each. Total mass of 10 000 000 000 tonnes. A rotating space colony needs roughly 30 tonnes of "earth" per m2 areal density + 10 tonnes of air ~ 40 000 kg/m2 or only from these little NEOs could be build 250 km2 of rotating colonies...
Unfortunately we hnow how to launch stuff into orbit from earth. We do not have experience with traveling out collect rocks using them as shielding, or even hollowing out a small moon and using that as a space station.
Offline
So what if we have less experience doing it? It still takes less energy to lift stuff off an asteroid than it does to lift stuff off the earth. Are you saying we should not try doing stuff we have no experience doing and instead do stuff the hard way simply because we've done that before? That makes little sense, we haven't terraformed planets before either, if we aren't ready to mine asteroids, we certainly aren't ready to terraform planets.
Offline
I think that private investment and donations will be the way to go. Many people think that investing government money in space exploration is a waste of funds that could be used here, so it's not too politically popular.
NASA receives a tiny fraction of the government's total funding. By reducing the tax burden on Americans, i.e. cutting programs like the insanely bloated defense budget, you would free up income that people might not mind donating a portion of their income to programs they feel are useful.
If I could choose how much of my tax dollar went where, I would probably divide it up between defense and NASA.
Why not set up and publicize a public fund for NASA, and or private space agencies. It could act as a trust. People could donate X many tax deductible dollars, and if the fund didn't accrue enough money for a given mission in a given amount of time money would revert to the donors. The money could be kept in low risk interest bearing accounts to keep up with inflation.
It won't detract from current funding, and if it proved even marginally sucessful it would help accelerate progress.
Offline