On 28 Feb 2016 at 18:29, Bruce  Johnson wrote:

> > SO what are the long entrenched arguments about Traveller tech and economics?

> Bluntly, the advent of essentially free energy via fusion, gravitic
> control, and the fine control over nuclear strong and weak forces
> implied by nuclear dampers means you can, essentially, cheaply
> create endless supplies of virtually any element you want. It´s the
> Philosophers Stone in generalist form.

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