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Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by gravitycop on Saturday January 10, 2009 @06:12PM (#428506)
People do not move to, and telecommute from, Hawaii because they must do it to survive. It also is not cheap for them to do so. 1.3 million people currently live in Hawaii, though it would be cheaper for them to live on the mainland.

If Hawaii can attract telecommuters, perhaps Earth orbit can attract telecommuters.

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by rsheridan6 on Saturday January 10, 2009 @10:58PM (#428767)
Hawaii has nice weather and beaches. What does Earth orbit have?
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by gravitycop on Sunday January 11, 2009 @12:27AM (#428831)
Earth orbit has:

  A continuum of accelerations, down to zero g.

  Hard vacuum.

  A sense of place that is not Earth surface.
Do they look like they are having fun?:

http://images.google.com/images?q=zero+gravity

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by fbailey on Sunday January 11, 2009 @11:48AM (#429282)
they do look like they have fun: http://images.google.com/images&q=rollercoaster+people ,but that doesn't mean I want to live in a rollercoaster
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by rsheridan6 on Sunday January 11, 2009 @01:14AM (#428888)
That would be fun until you had to take a piss.
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by gravitycop on Sunday January 11, 2009 @01:25AM (#428899)
Indeed. Moving away from the axis-of-rotation increases acceleration. When you are ready, you can go back to zero-g, or .5 g, or 1 g, or 1.5 g, etc. Instead of having to pay thousands of dollars each for airplane parabola rides, it is all right there.

For the same reasons that ski bums live near ski slopes, zero-g bums might live near zero-g. When you live in a spinning orbital habitat, you can have rapid inexpensive access - a veritable season pass - to a variety of acceleration levels.

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by tokenadult on Sunday January 11, 2009 @01:22AM (#428896)
People do not move to, and telecommute from, Hawaii because they must do it to survive.

How many people move to, and telecommute from, Hawaii? Who counts them? By contrast, how many people move from Hawaii to the mainland to pursue the same occupation they pursued in Hawaii?

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by Xichekolas on Saturday January 10, 2009 @08:59PM (#428660)
We could probably telecommute from LEO, but anything further out starts to become annoying if you need anything in real time.

On the other hand, with the lack of distractions, I imagine the Moon would be an incredibly productive locale.

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by gravitycop on Saturday January 10, 2009 @10:15PM (#428727)
We could probably telecommute from LEO, but anything further out starts to become annoying if you need anything in real time.

There is excessive latency with satellite internet, which uses GEO satellites. However, satellite internet requires 4 hops. Telecommuting from GEO only requires 2 hops = half the latency. ~23,000 miles x 2 = 46,000 miles. 46,000 miles / 186,000 miles/second = 247 milliseconds of latency (about a quarter of a second).

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by Xichekolas on Sunday January 11, 2009 @12:15AM (#428824)
247 milliseconds of latency

I guess that is good enough provided your job doesn't involve winning DotA tournaments.

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by jmtulloss on Saturday January 10, 2009 @06:20PM (#428516)
We can take the space elevator to work!
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by gravitycop on Saturday January 10, 2009 @06:32PM (#428532)
It is 22,300 miles to GEO. At 100 mph, a trip to or from GEO would take 223 hours, or 9 days.
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by jmtulloss on Saturday January 10, 2009 @06:34PM (#428533)
I guess we should go a bit faster then.
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by gravitycop on Saturday January 10, 2009 @06:39PM (#428538)
For faster travel, rockets tend to be chosen. What, then, would be the point of a space elevator?

By the way, the top recorded speed of a Bugatti Veyron, the fastest production car in the world, is 253 mph - on the flat. Travelling vertically at that speed, a space elevator car (we might assume it is powered by a 1%-efficient laser-beam stationed on the ground and aimed at photovoltaic panels on the bottom of the elevator car) would take 88 hours (or 3.7 days) to get to GEO.

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by jmtulloss on Saturday January 10, 2009 @07:47PM (#428591)
Haha, it's ok, it was a joke.

Thanks for doing the math though :).

Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by aardvarkious on Saturday January 10, 2009 @09:33PM (#428697)
I could see humans taking rockets while all non-perishable cargo takes the elevator.
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by swombat on Sunday January 11, 2009 @07:44AM (#429095)
Last I heard it costs some $20,000 per pound to send material up in a space shuttle. I think this would be beyond most people's commuting allowance!
Re:Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now by gravitycop on Sunday January 11, 2009 @07:51AM (#429099)