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Assuming we accept your pessimistic take on the limits on technology's ability to bring down the cost of creating off-world habitats for humans and transporting
by ETH_start 4y ago
Assuming we accept your pessimistic take on the limits on technology's ability to bring down the cost of creating off-world habitats for humans and transporting people between them and Earth:
You can still massively grow the Earth-based economy, without damaging its biosphere, by extracting the resources it needs from outside Earth.
This does not require moving people between planets, just energy and goods, which are much less costly to transport than people, and can become extremely affordable to transport as infrastructure is set up to facilitate it.
- dredmorbius 4y agoAre there then no limits at all? What are the limits, if any? When are they met, presuming constant-rate (that is to say, exponential) growth? How much is that time extended if you expand the limit by a factor of 10? 100? 1,000? Do you honestly think that the Earth can support 80 billion, or 800 billion souls, or 8 trillion, at present G-7 nation levels of affluence? A 4% annual growth rate corresponds to a doubling time of about 17.5 years. 2^3.3 ~= 10 2^6.6 ~= 100 2^9.9 ~= 1000 Keep in mind that your binding constraint isn't your most abundant resource / capable sink, it's the least.
- ETH_start 4y agoThe limits are far into the future, at the very least close to when we harness a significant fraction of the energy emitted by the sun, which is trillions of times more energy than human civilization uses today.
- dredmorbius 4y agoIs energy then the most pressing limiting factor presently? On what do you base this assessment?