From: matthew.malthouse@guardian.co.uk
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 11:17:19 +0000
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune




On 02/03/2002 06:37:36 Jeff Wilson wrote:

>> From: "Andy Robertson" 

>Rudesind and others of his society can't be expected to be cognizant of
>what else besides mere irrigation would be required to cover the moon
>with forest. After whatever other modifications it would take to keep an
>atmosphere in place, yes it would have to be irrigated. And while it
>does not sound like something of ineffable, recall that Father Inire's
>Gardens allow a confluence of Gyoll and the Lake of Birds; for all we
>know he diverted a tributary of the Brook Madregot to water Green/Lune.
>
>In addition, this sort of sweeping up and piling of asteroids would
>relieve the metal scarcity problem supposedly caused by all the ships
>and ordnance leaving Urth, never or seldom to return.

Out of curiosity does anyone have near to hand an estimate of the mass of
the solar system, what proportion of that would be in the small bodies and
what proportion of those metals?

Following the thought logically, rather than with literary intent, mining
/ collecting metals in near space would seem an obvious move once space
flight was available.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that this
had been done.

Hence my curiosity about quantity because that and usage rates might
suggest timescales.

Matthew



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