The cosmologist might argue with the notion that mankind can achieve net gain using non-terrestrial resources. However, the economist should consider the concept plausible. The sun is a star. The moon and the chemically more diverse asteroids and comets very likely represent common detritis of stellar birthing. When we build fresh with sunlight and moon dust we grow on the common stuff of the universe. Debate of the uniqueness of Earth and the special “place” of humanity fundamentally changes (33-36). Childhood's End (A.C. Clark) can be by our own doing. 4. COSTS AND BUILDING SKILLS Rockets have served well as the first portal to space. They have not only conveyed machines and a few willing people away from Earth. The goals to which farsighted leaders directed them beguiled many terrestrials into new collective associations (new group skills) with peaceful prowess that was before only dimly perceived. Rockets, up to now, have been instruments of the service segment of our advanced economies. An economy can have a “service” sector when it has a physical surplus (energy, matter, C + C + C in Fig. 1). Figure 5 aids in understanding how well we've done to date. This is a histogram of billions of dollars (B$ per year) of value added to matter (going to C+C + C) in the U.S. economy (1972) by 230 of the 469 then- recognized industrial segments (Standard Industrial Categories—SICs). Each vertical bar sums the total value added by the fraction of those 230 SICs which output goods with the same average intrinsic value (ie., $/kg). High $/kg goods (e.g., integrated circuit chips) are made less visible in this representation because they are averaged against lower-value components in the same SIC (e.g., cabinets for computers). However, the contribution of the “chips” to their SIC is not lost (27b). Notice that most goods cost less than 6$ per kg in 1972. Of course inflation is forcing these prices per kilogram to the right. That is not necessarily progress. Life is relatively easy for us just because these goods are not dear. Notice that raw materials and energy costs were insignificant fractions of the values of these products in 1972. We know from the perspective of 1982 (37) that rising energy costs (produced by skillful foreign control of a high-grade manipulatable resource) can be a significant cost factor throughout an economy. Rising energy costs, both for the energy and for the winning of Demandite, of which carbon fuels are a component, can force prices upward just as inexorably as government fiscal policies. It is easy to imagine “turbulent flow” being the main characteristic of a world economy beginning to approach major natural limits. Industrial expansion into space may be necessary to smooth, predictable economic growth for prosperous humans. We should also note that in controlling inflation government fiscal policy (39) does not automatically guarantee better material standards of living (leftward shift of goods prices in Fig. 5). Competition for increasing access to the limited “gifts of nature” by the increasing number of progressively more competent peoples can also shift the price histogram (Fig. 5) rightwards. Perhaps world competition for limited world and human resources is part of the new phenomenon of permanent inflation (37). Research budgets are certainly increasing (38). Interestingly, the ratio (1 +j)/(l + i) where i = inflation rate and j = interest rate is rather steady for significant industrial sectors over twenty to thirty year periods (40). This ratio is relevant to calculations of present net value. The major effective terrestrial recourses to increasing energy costs are to divert skills (which have their own major expenses) into making more energy efficient
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