Analog February 1986 [antikvár]

nMTEditoridtanley SchmidtLet's get one thing clearly understood right from the start: I'm all for man's expansion into space, for all kinds of reasons. In the long run, if our species wants to have any realistic hope of being more than a flash in the astronomical pan, it has to expand. It simply cannot afford to confine its entire membership to one vulnerable little planet. In the short run, while the vast majority of us will still live here, the rest of the Solar System offers resources which can greatly enrich all our lives. We can, if we really want to and we're clever enough, virtually eliminate poverty as we know it on Earth.Yet I must balk at some of the specific terminology I've heard some space advocates use in promoting this idea to the public. When I hear lunar and asteroid resources described as "virtually unlimited" or "virtually inexhaustible," 1 begin to get uncomfortable. When a writer goes even further, as some do, and drops even the "virtually." I positively cringe."Earth's resources are limited, but those of the Solar System are infinite."Now where have I heard that before?VVell . . . American history, for instance. When they found out it was here, Europeans swarmed exuberantly onto this continent, dazzled by the seemingly endless material wealth they saw here for the taking. Nobody thought about conservation; there was so obviously so much here that it would have seemed stupid to worry about how much anybody used. Or how much anybody polluted, for that matter; a reservoir so4Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact