[Strummer]

Tech will enable us to escape the fate of the Earth. The planet was only the creche, the true home of humanity is in Space - interplanetary space for the next few centuries, and interstellar space after that.

Just out of curiosity, how do you explain Fermi's paradox? Why isn't the galaxy alread full of Von Neumann's probes when expanding into space is so easy for an advanced civilization?

[KaiserJeep]

KingM, you just don't get it. Your mind is in a box and you can't think outside of it.

The truth of it is that planets are nasty, dirty, dangerous places full of disease and predators. I said SPACE not PLANET. There is lots of space in the Earth-Moon area, the LaGrange points alone will support Billions of people in various habitats such as O'Neil cylinders, and with microgravity and hard vacuum manufacturing environments.

Planets are not necessary or desirable. They are nasty places at the bottom of energy-expensive gravity wells. You can transit from one zero-G environment to another with minimal energy expenditure as long as you don't have to descend and then lift off in a gravity well.

Solar power in space is 24X7 and not limited by the day/night cycle of a planet. Water, carbon compounds, and metals of all kinds can be found in asteroids, and there are 7000+ known and mapped Near-Earth asteroids, and millions more in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Water in the rings of Saturn is easily accessible and there are millions of ice bodies in the Oort Cloud that contains our Solar System.

Living space, water, raw materials for soil, and virtually unlimited metals, all accessible from orbit, and nothing requires a planet. We have known how to simulate gravity since one of the Gemini capsule flights, when the capsule was tethered to an Agena booster and spun to generate simulated gravity.

The Solar System has enough space, enough power, enough water, and enough raw materials to build space habitats for Trillions of people.

Planets are slums, nasty, dirty, and dangerous. Just because humanity was born in one does not mean we cannot get out to live the good life away from a planet.

[KaiserJeep]

Tech will enable us to escape the fate of the Earth. The planet was only the creche, the true home of humanity is in Space - interplanetary space for the next few centuries, and interstellar space after that.

Just out of curiosity, how do you explain Fermi's paradox? Why isn't the galaxy alread full of Von Neumann's probes when expanding into space is so easy for an advanced civilization?

Fermi's paradox is a rathole of no particular use. The universe is what it is, and it does not matter today and will not matter for hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years whether the Earth and the human species are unique or not. This is the neighborhood we live in, one small inhabitable planet and nearby millions of times the living space of that planet, along with everything needed for life.

By the time we develop the technology for star travel, we will have a better grasp of whether we are alone or not. Which question is of very little consequence in any case, to those of us with the pragmatic view of the Universe.

[KingM]

Sputnik was closer in time to Kitty Hawk than it was to 2014. When exactly in your really cool Flash Gordon worldview will we be making the transition to awesome space colonies? Just curious if I need to start packing, or if it's too soon.

[KaiserJeep]

We are on the threshold of building space colonies. If you are unfamiliar with the current efforts:

1) The O'Neill Society has been designing space habitats for Near-Earth orbits and the LaGrange points since the 1970's.

2) Commercial asteroid mining is being conducted by two companies, Planetary Resources (formerly Arkyd Astronautics) and Deep Space Industries.

3) There are now upwards of a dozen private companies either in business providing rockets or aspiring to do so. Elon Musk's SpaceX is probably the best known, Orbital Sciences recently suffered an explosion in a night launch.

4) NASA currently is proposing the Saturn missions to retrieve ice.

5) Scaled Composites (i.e. Burt Rutan) and Virgin Galactic are selling tickets for space flights.

Etc etc. My guess is we are 20-50 years from commercial success in the private exploitation of space.

[dorlomin]

Many people laugh at Thomas Malthus. Many people think Thomas Malthus was crazy in suggesting that there will be a point where there is more people than we can feed, and many people will starve to death. It has happened before in Ireland during the 1840s potatoe famine

Malthus was right in his criticism of Says Law. And that is about it. He was against free trade and allowing imported grains because it would encourage the poor to breed. He argued against Riccardo that the UK had a comparative advantage in machine manufacture and it was better served educating its people to build machines and trade with the world. Perhaps the most spectacular failure in the history of economics. He also argued against the meagre provisions for the poor of his day.

All in all a hideous human being and perhaps the most wrong economist in history.

[vtsnowedin]

We are on the threshold of building space colonies. If you are unfamiliar with the current efforts:

You have fantasies of space colonies providing the human race an escape route. I have fantasies of Miss America winners joining me in remote locations to share and slack our mutual lusts. I have a thirty times better chance of having my dreams come true then you do.

[dinopello]

We are on the threshold of building space colonies. If you are unfamiliar with the current efforts:

You have fantasies of space colonies providing the human race an escape route. I have fantasies of Miss America winners joining me in remote locations to share and slack our mutual lusts. I have a thirty times better chance of having my dreams come true then you do.

He's got to be pulling your leg. We don't need no stinkin' planet! Maybe he's yanking your breathing tube

[vtsnowedin]

At least I have interesting dreams!!

[Strummer]

2) Commercial asteroid mining is being conducted by two companies, Planetary Resources (formerly Arkyd Astronautics) and Deep Space Industries.

"being conducted"?

[KingM]

It's a video game, happening in KJ's frenzied imagination.

He's lecturing about Malthus while coming from the assumption that billions of humans will soon be living in the Star Trek universe. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about his opinion on the subject.

[Newfie]

Perhaps a better question would be....

Was "The Limits to Growth" correct?

I say yes.

[Peak_Yeast]

I cant see any significant extension of BAU.

Fusion power will not enable any significant delay, but will only enable us to further destroy the earth for a few years - I believe it wont even be extended by decades.

This civilization is facing death by a 1000 cuts. Not 1 or even 2.

Escaping into space is not an option for more than a priviledged few - and most likely only for a short duration - since staying "up there" is likely to either kill them outright or disable their bodies enough for them to be useful when returned.

Building a civilization in space is absolutely far out fetched fantasies. Today we send a few rockets with minimal payload and its straining our governments to do those small things. The future is much more constrained than the now - so its not getting easier. There are massive multiple problems with living in space. - Not only our biology is a problem. None of them can be solved - not even with the insane 25% of world production that goes into military today.

Actually - those 25% is a very clear signal of how primitive humans are as a species. And obviously disgustingly stupid to boot - since we know it and cant stop it. If we cant even scale weapons manufacturing down at ANY time in our civilization- how on earth can we solve anything else?

Just tell the starving masses that they must starve, suffer malnutrition and die because we must build a spaceport. I am sure it wont be met with any understanding whatsoever.

The tomorrow will be all about food, keeping low and middle class income level in spite of the problems and scaling all leisure and wasteful behaviour in the private sector away. And it will seem so harsh and sad that there are no more world-handicap olympics. So we will placate ourselves with what little good we have left. - After each downsizing.

The only question is: Quick or slow.

Human intelligence as a species can be compared to a 3D NULL vector. While each contribution might take us somewhere - the sum of all contributions become 0,0,0.

[Newfie]

Like him or hate him you must admire KJ for his leadership abilities.

Yet another thread drug down his rabbit hole.

[KaiserJeep]

What the Doomers here really resent is optimism. Not only do I offer an alternative to universal doom for the human species, I also offer the further, completely unrestrained growth of Capitalism, increased/almost unlimited personal freedom, and the continued exploitation of the "environment", if you want to expand that term to include the raw elements that were used to build the planets billions of years ago.

"No!" they scream, "We must all die as per the plan!"

Too bad, so sad. Humans prosper as a species, all those who lack the vision to colonize space meet a nasty, brutal, painful death on the planet's surface when the Earth becomes a bad place to be located.

A bunch of Luddites, we are better off without them. They are welcome to stay behind, and their further ignorance and disbelief is encouraged.

[radon1]

completely unrestrained growth of Capitalism,

Capitalism is finite both ways. In case of limits, it is finite because capital growth will become impossible; in case of no-limits, it is finite because means of production will develop to a stage where the output will become so abundant that exploitation* will become redundant, thus making money and capital redundant.

*exploitation - appropriation of added value.

[Lore]

Jesus was not a capitalist.

[dinopello]

?The rapture rainbow, is it the end or a new beginning?