Asteroids as Islands, or More Ghost Towns
While writing yesterday's post about Amelia Earhart, I ended up doing a bit of research on Pacific islands. Being a space geek, this led me to think about space - specifically asteroid colonization. Basically, the economics of asteroid colonies could be similar to Pacific islands.
In yesterday's post, the hypothesis was that Earhart's plane crash-landed on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island of the Phoenix Islands group. Of that group of eight islands, only one, Kanton, is inhabited. For most of Kanton's history, the place was uninhabited. Then, in the 1930s, it became a refueling point for Pan Am Clipper flying boats. After WWII, it transitioned to a refueling base for land-based aircraft. At the height of settlement, it reached a dizzying population of around 100 people. Then the aircraft stopped coming, and per Wikipedia, in 2010 the population had fallen to 24 people, who were in desperate need of food. Also of note, throughout Kanton's history, the lack of fresh water was always a problem.
The US Coast Guard ended up making the delivery as the Republic of Kiribati, who governed the island, couldn't. Not surprising - Kiribati has just under 100,000 people spread out in penny packets on islands over an area the size of the country of India. An economic or military powerhouse they are not.
It's easy for me to see potential parallels to asteroids. Kanton, with an area of 40 square kilometers, would probably correlate to a mid-sized asteroid. I could see an asteroid becoming a mine site, getting a small settlement, and when the mine played out or otherwise became unprofitable, the place becomes abandoned, or worse, semi-abandoned.
This dynamic isn't unique to islands, of course. America is full of ghost towns - places where a town was built and then abandoned. Parenthetically, ghost towns are not just in the West - they exist in Illinois too. Here, our wetter weather tends to cause the abandoned buildings to decay faster, leaving less to look at. But if you see a clump of trees surrounded by farm fields, occasionally that clump is what's left of a ghost town.
Similar problems plague the other islands in the Kiribatis, which is why that nation is one of the poorest in the world, and almost completely dependent on foreign aid. So, would similar problems plague asteroid colonization? Ghost asteroids - sounds like a neat title for a book.
In yesterday's post, the hypothesis was that Earhart's plane crash-landed on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island of the Phoenix Islands group. Of that group of eight islands, only one, Kanton, is inhabited. For most of Kanton's history, the place was uninhabited. Then, in the 1930s, it became a refueling point for Pan Am Clipper flying boats. After WWII, it transitioned to a refueling base for land-based aircraft. At the height of settlement, it reached a dizzying population of around 100 people. Then the aircraft stopped coming, and per Wikipedia, in 2010 the population had fallen to 24 people, who were in desperate need of food. Also of note, throughout Kanton's history, the lack of fresh water was always a problem.
The US Coast Guard ended up making the delivery as the Republic of Kiribati, who governed the island, couldn't. Not surprising - Kiribati has just under 100,000 people spread out in penny packets on islands over an area the size of the country of India. An economic or military powerhouse they are not.
It's easy for me to see potential parallels to asteroids. Kanton, with an area of 40 square kilometers, would probably correlate to a mid-sized asteroid. I could see an asteroid becoming a mine site, getting a small settlement, and when the mine played out or otherwise became unprofitable, the place becomes abandoned, or worse, semi-abandoned.
This dynamic isn't unique to islands, of course. America is full of ghost towns - places where a town was built and then abandoned. Parenthetically, ghost towns are not just in the West - they exist in Illinois too. Here, our wetter weather tends to cause the abandoned buildings to decay faster, leaving less to look at. But if you see a clump of trees surrounded by farm fields, occasionally that clump is what's left of a ghost town.
Similar problems plague the other islands in the Kiribatis, which is why that nation is one of the poorest in the world, and almost completely dependent on foreign aid. So, would similar problems plague asteroid colonization? Ghost asteroids - sounds like a neat title for a book.