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> Especially as all you gain is energy (which hasn’t proven limiting) What? Civilization runs on cheap, abundant energy. Before the industrial revolution we ha

> Especially as all you gain is energy (which hasn’t proven limiting) What? Civilization runs on cheap, abundant energy. Before the industrial revolution we had to use labor animals, slaves and the occasionally water and wind mill. Providing light was expensive. Global supply chains (transportation), aluminium smelting, fixing nitrogen for fertilizer or calcination for cement consume stupendous amounts of energy. If energy became cheaper then creating green fuel for airplanes and rockets, electrorefining all metals, desalination or perhaps mining and crushing olivine rocks for carbon sequestration would become more feasible. Whenever vertical farming is discussed here the main counter-argument boils down to energy not being cheap enough. It's hard to compete with the sun delivering it to plants for free.

Grustaf 5y ago
None of those things are necessary for civilisation, or radio communication. They just improve things on the margin. Besides, surely it must be simpler to build a fusion reactor on earth than harvesting enough material to cover the sun in solar panels. Would the solar system even have enough resources for that?
- the8472 5y ago
  > None of those things are necessary for civilisation That's only true for low values of civilization. Even bronze age tech consumes more than hunter-gatherers which consume more than monkeys. > Besides, surely it must be simpler to build a fusion reactor on earth than harvesting enough material to cover the sun in solar panels. Dyson swarms sit higher on the kardashev scale than harvesting whatever you can get on a single planet. At some point waste heat rather than fuel will also become a real problem. Fusion reactors are ultimately thermal power stations, glorified steam engines. > Would the solar system even have enough resources for that? You'd start small with asteroids. And then disassemble some moons with shallow gravity wells. Which of course again requires stupendous amounts of energy just to move the material around but the sun still has billions of years left so there will be time to recoup that investment.
- pie420 5y ago
  The sun is a large fusion reactor. Eventually you will run out of mass in the solar system to put in your fusion reactor, and then you'll resort to extracting energy from the natural fusion reactor. A Dyson sphere is a fusion reactor of sorts.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
LatteLazy 5y ago
I don't want to doubt we will find some use for more energy but... I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. I don't lack for aluminium or even transatlantic flights (the most energy intensive think I could think of buying). If I really want to go to X I do. Price doesn't really bother me. Maybe we can use 10x the current supply so everyone can have my lifestyle. But that's still vastly less than a Dyson sphere would produce. For a long time energy was a limiting factor on human development. But I don't think that's true for the average westerner anymore. I want time off and less stress and relationships. Those mostly come down to social structures and information, not GJs...
- pixl97 5y ago
  >I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. You don't. You only think you do because you are living on borrowed energy, massive amounts of energy stored in carbon over the last billion years. Unleashing this stored energy is going to burn down our planet. So yes, we need way more energy that is not tied to digging up dead dinosaurs. Even more energy if we want to put them back in the ground. And even more if everyone wants clean water. Everyone else that is not a westerner wants lights and water and food too.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    PV can give us about 10,000 times our current power even without building a Dyson swarm. Ten billion humans each regularly using a thousand times the power of the average current American could happen, but it’s ten times greater a change to how people live than was reaching modern day American power use relative to the day before the invention of fire (or domestication, whichever came first).
    - m_mueller 5y ago
      Consider that a lot of materials we take for granted today (and throw in the trash when we're done) aren't renewable either and would take more energy to produce if replaced with renewable equivalents. Consider also that in order to grow human population at some point you start to need large amounts of energy to colonize new space, be it planetary, on asteroids or spade stations. If more energy becomes available, demand for it will scale accordingly because of new possibilities.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Civilization runs on energy deposited once ever in the history of our planet that in geological time scales will be gone in the snap of our fingers and never return.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  Currently. It looks like we'll move on from that, though the devil is in the details. :-)

Grustaf 5y ago

None of those things are necessary for civilisation, or radio communication. They just improve things on the margin. Besides, surely it must be simpler to build a fusion reactor on earth than harvesting enough material to cover the sun in solar panels. Would the solar system even have enough resources for that?

the8472 5y ago
> None of those things are necessary for civilisation That's only true for low values of civilization. Even bronze age tech consumes more than hunter-gatherers which consume more than monkeys. > Besides, surely it must be simpler to build a fusion reactor on earth than harvesting enough material to cover the sun in solar panels. Dyson swarms sit higher on the kardashev scale than harvesting whatever you can get on a single planet. At some point waste heat rather than fuel will also become a real problem. Fusion reactors are ultimately thermal power stations, glorified steam engines. > Would the solar system even have enough resources for that? You'd start small with asteroids. And then disassemble some moons with shallow gravity wells. Which of course again requires stupendous amounts of energy just to move the material around but the sun still has billions of years left so there will be time to recoup that investment.
pie420 5y ago
The sun is a large fusion reactor. Eventually you will run out of mass in the solar system to put in your fusion reactor, and then you'll resort to extracting energy from the natural fusion reactor. A Dyson sphere is a fusion reactor of sorts.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

LatteLazy 5y ago

I don't want to doubt we will find some use for more energy but... I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. I don't lack for aluminium or even transatlantic flights (the most energy intensive think I could think of buying). If I really want to go to X I do. Price doesn't really bother me. Maybe we can use 10x the current supply so everyone can have my lifestyle. But that's still vastly less than a Dyson sphere would produce. For a long time energy was a limiting factor on human development. But I don't think that's true for the average westerner anymore. I want time off and less stress and relationships. Those mostly come down to social structures and information, not GJs...

pixl97 5y ago
>I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. You don't. You only think you do because you are living on borrowed energy, massive amounts of energy stored in carbon over the last billion years. Unleashing this stored energy is going to burn down our planet. So yes, we need way more energy that is not tied to digging up dead dinosaurs. Even more energy if we want to put them back in the ground. And even more if everyone wants clean water. Everyone else that is not a westerner wants lights and water and food too.
- ben_w 5y ago
  PV can give us about 10,000 times our current power even without building a Dyson swarm. Ten billion humans each regularly using a thousand times the power of the average current American could happen, but it’s ten times greater a change to how people live than was reaching modern day American power use relative to the day before the invention of fire (or domestication, whichever came first).
  - m_mueller 5y ago
    Consider that a lot of materials we take for granted today (and throw in the trash when we're done) aren't renewable either and would take more energy to produce if replaced with renewable equivalents. Consider also that in order to grow human population at some point you start to need large amounts of energy to colonize new space, be it planetary, on asteroids or spade stations. If more energy becomes available, demand for it will scale accordingly because of new possibilities.

michaelmrose 5y ago

Civilization runs on energy deposited once ever in the history of our planet that in geological time scales will be gone in the snap of our fingers and never return.

_carbyau_ 5y ago
Currently. It looks like we'll move on from that, though the devil is in the details. :-)