| abstract
| - In this article I would like to delve into the logistics of TMP with a look at the spectrum of transportation and telecommunications employed through its phases of development. In the context of community development, I often use the term 'communication' to refer simultaneously to both transportation and telecommunication because they represent the means by which a community engages in exchange with the rest of the world and, quite often, they share a common infrastructure and are in various ways intrinsically interdependent. Just as message runners of ancient times shared roads with ox carts and just as the telegraph wires that ran along 19th century railways were a critical element of the railway system itself, so too will radio and laser telecommunications systems be an integral component in any future space transportation system. These two functions can never be entirely independent. New community growth and sustainability are dependent upon the 'bandwidth' of its communication. Historically, new communities do not appear in a vacuum. They are created at the ends of the civilization's collective communication network and their growth depends on their position in that network and the volume -the bandwidth- of traffic that moves to and from them. Attempts to create community beyond the reach of this network have tended to be failures. It is possible to equip a community with a high degree of self-sufficiency but never totally and the smaller the community the more difficult this is as many facilities are dependent upon economies of scale to support them. New World colonization would never have been possible without routine intercontinental sea travel, dangerous as this was at the time. Dreams of new and largely independent or isolated communities -various forms of eco-community in particular- are common and popular but are, in general, mere fantasies when they do not take fully into consideration the issue of a community's communication with the rest of the world and its energy, environmental, and economic overhead. Can an eco-community truly call itself 'sustainable' if its remote location (perhaps compelled by its choice of unconventional architecture) compels its inhabitants to all drive SUVs and commute to cities for everything from jobs to health care to shopping? All that presumed environmental savings in the use of straw bale, earthen construction, solar power, or what-have-you squandered at the fuel pump. This issue of community communication is especially critical for the early stages of TMP due to the problems of a limited spectrum of available transportation and telecommunications technology. As I have described previously, the pace of growth and the option for geopolitical autonomy for a marine colony like Aquarius is totally dependent upon this issue. No matter what the technology used to build it, it's distance from shore and degree of independence from coastal communities and governments becomes completely dependent on the types of transportation it can afford as a function of its scale and population. Limited to the available technology, a marine colony would have to be at least as large as the maximum size version of aquarius Marshal Savage envisioned to even begin to migrate away from shore. Only through the pursuit of the development of new transportation and communications technologies can the gaps in the existing communication spectrum be filled to allow a community to acquire more independence sooner. This essential problem will be faced by every kind of community TMP realizes. Indeed, ultimately the story of TMP is really about the cultivation of a communications network spanning the solar system and ultimately the galaxy. These networks are what constitute the vital arteries of a civilization. Lets now have a look at the types of transportation and telecommunications technology that may be significant in each of the stages of TMP.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)