Joseph Paul
By My Hand Designs LLC
4221 N Park Ave
Indianapolis, IN 46205
317-931-0561

On 3/6/2016 4:01 AM, xxxxxx@shadowgard.com wrote:
> On 28 Feb 2016 at 18:29, Bruce  Johnson wrote:
>
>>> SO what are the long entrenched arguments about Traveller tech and economics?
>> <snip>Free energy argument<snip>
> Heck, just the "free" energy means you can cheaply seperate raw rock
> into its consitituent elements. If you use the simplest method (a
> sort of overgrown mass spectrograph) you even get the elements
> seperated into isotopes.
>
> Even if you don't go that far, asteroid mining should make sapphire
> (aluminum oxide), quartz (silicon dioxide), aluminum, magnesium,
> titanium, nickel & iron insanely cheap. Because they'll be "waste
> materials" from the mining.
>
> So in asteroid belts, the equivalent of wallboard may be something
> like a sandwich of foamed "glass" between sheets of aluminum. Strong,
> light, and a good insulator.
>
>
> --
> Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
> shadow at shadowgard dot com

Ok - so re-imagining the future should start with an understanding of
the differences in material availability and cost in that future.

With really cheap gold I am seeing cloth of gold becoming a popular
fashion statement. Nothing has the shine of real gold and it could be
really cheap to make in an automated fiber facility. So cloth of gold
parachute pants on dockside because... free energy.

What other kinds of materials become possible?

What won't be cheap?

Joseph Paul