3 ms·

- the Moon is extremely large; if you mined the entire Moon and covered the Earth's surface with the material, including oceans, it would form a layer about thi

- the Moon is extremely large; if you mined the entire Moon and covered the Earth's surface with the material, including oceans, it would form a layer about thirty miles thick - most of the Moon is made up of the same stuff as the Earth's crust (silica, alumina, etc) and has very little value, compared to the energy needed to get it off the Moon - if humans remove material from the Moon, the rest of it doesn't "float off into the universe", it just stays in orbit unless it is actively pushed, which would take an insane amount of energy, something like the entire world's electricity consumption for a billion years

tw04 3y ago
>- the Moon is extremely large; if you mined the entire Moon and covered the Earth's surface with the material, including oceans, it would form a layer about thirty miles thick I'm aware of how large the moon is. >- most of the Moon is made up of the same stuff as the Earth's crust (silica, alumina, etc) and has very little value, compared to the energy needed to get it off the Moon CURRENTLY has very little value. Just like CURRENTLY there's very little value to water in most of the world. In 500 years, without some fairly significant changes to the way we're treating the earth, that will be a VERY different story. >- if humans remove material from the Moon, the rest of it doesn't "float off into the universe", it just stays in orbit unless it is actively pushed, which would take an insane amount of energy That's the point... what exactly do you think is going to happen to earth in that scenario? >something like the entire world's electricity consumption for a billion years What was the entire world's electricity consumption 500 years ago?
- ben_w 3y ago
  > I'm aware of how large the moon is. Are you? Removing from the moon a cubic kilometre of solid rock per person would be a thing you'd notice in a side-by-side comparison, while being less than the optical illusion that makes it seem bigger when close to the horizon. 30 miles down is 2-3 times the Mohorovicic discontinuity between crust and mantle; 30 miles up you're above the ozone layer and the air is too thin to breathe. That's the quantity being discussed. > >- if humans remove material from the Moon, the rest of it doesn't "float off into the universe", it just stays in orbit unless it is actively pushed, which would take an insane amount of energy > That's the point... what exactly do you think is going to happen to earth in that scenario? It stays right where it is: orbiting earth. > >something like the entire world's electricity consumption for a billion years > What was the entire world's electricity consumption 500 years ago? Electricity is a red herring; consider all power of all kinds combined. 500 years ago, let's assume that meant just human muscles even though windmills and watermills existed and animal muscle was also used, just to maximise the difference. The estimated world population in 1500 was around 0.43-0.50 billion; again, let's low-ball that to 430 million. Human calorie use is about 2500/day; multiply by 430 million gets us 52.06 GW. Today, we are at 20 TW, which is a factor of 384.17 greater. The kinetic energy of the moon is about 10^27 J: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2+*+moon+mass+*+%28moon+orbital+radius+%2F+moon+orbital+period%29%5E2 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2+*+moon+mass+*+%28... which suggests it would take about 1.5 million years at current power use rates: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=9.74×10%5E26+joules+%2F+20+TW https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=9.74×10%5E26+joules+%2F... or 4016 years if I assume another 384.17 increase in the rate of human power consumption: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gregorian+years+%2F+384.17 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gr... Things which are actually likely to get us the kind of increases to our available power such that we might do this include "build a Dyson swarm", which I wouldn't rule out happening in my lifetime, but also doing that means we can do a thing called "star lifting", and we'd want to because the sun contains more interesting elements than all the planets combined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting
  - tw04 3y ago
    >30 miles down is 2-3 times the Mohorovicic discontinuity between crust and mantle; 30 miles up you're above the ozone layer and the air is too thin to breathe. That's the quantity being discussed. Again, I'm aware of how large the moon is. >It stays right where it is: orbiting earth. Huh? You just asked if I understood how large the moon was, and then came to the conclusion the only thing that would happen should the moon not be there is that it would stay where it is? It would completely change the tilt of the earth, tides, etc. Do you think the spreading cloud of moon dust would have the same gravitational pull as the moon in one piece? >Electricity is a red herring; consider all power of all kinds combined. 500 years ago, let's assume that meant just human muscles even though windmills and watermills existed and animal muscle was also used, just to maximise the difference. It's very much not a red herring, and you can't have it both ways. If you're basing it on "human power" then you're going to need to calculate today's human power as well because there are endless manual labor jobs that humans still persist at today. >or 4016 years if I assume another 384.17 increase in the rate of human power consumption: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gr https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gr... Except power hasn't increased linearly over time, which I assume you know and at this point are just arguing for the sake of argument. In 1900 the total yearly power consumption of humanity was 12TW. In 2022 it was 178,899TW, an increase of 14,908x in 100 years. Assuming a 384.17 increase is a great way to make some very flawed assumptions look good. But it doesn't reflect reality. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > Again, I'm aware of how large the moon is. You're not demonstrating awareness. > Huh? You just asked if I understood how large the moon was, and then came to the conclusion the only thing that would happen should the moon not be there is that it would stay where it is? It would completely change the tilt of the earth, tides, etc. Do you think the spreading cloud of moon dust would have the same gravitational pull as the moon in one piece? You appear to be mixing different things. You wrote this: > Have you stopped to think what happens to the earth if the moon were just outright gone? Because that's ultimately what the debate is about. If anything valuable is found there, you can be assured someone will strip mine it until every last piece of value is removed, and the non-valuable thing is left to float off into the universe, not their problem. Specifically focus on this bit: "the non-valuable thing is left to float off into the universe". No: it stays in orbit of the Earth. If it's not valuable, nobody's going to move it. > It's very much not a red herring, and you can't have it both ways. If you're basing it on "human power" then you're going to need to calculate today's human power as well because there are endless manual labor jobs that humans still persist at today. Since the industrial revolution, everything else has grown so much, totalling about 20 TW, that human muscle power has become a rounding error, less than 5% of that: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=8+billion+*+2500+kcal%2Fday https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=8+billion+*+2500+kcal%2... Human muscle used to be relevant. And I gave that alone for 500 years ago in order to maximise the difference between then and now, to steel-man my case. > Except power hasn't increased linearly over time, which I assume you know and at this point are just arguing for the sake of argument. I see you don't know what "linear" means. If I'd assumed linear growth from 50 GW to 20 TW (which is 20,000 GW) over the last 500 years, thats (20,000 - 50) GW/500 years, which is an insignificant difference from saying 20TW/500 years. Applying that forward would for another 500 years would look like "double", not "x384". I am in fact assuming exponential growth by suggesting a further x384 growth in the next 500 years. The exponent itself has to increase in order to get faster than this rate. > In 1900 the total yearly power consumption of humanity was 12TW. In 2022 it was 178,899TW, an increase of 14,908x in 100 years. Assuming a 384.17 increase is a great way to make some very flawed assumptions look good. But it doesn't reflect reality. I see you can't read the graph. That graph says it was 12,131 TWh/year in 1900 (which is 1.385 terawatts), and 178,899 TWh/year in 2022 (which is 20.42 terawatts). This is a change of x14.75. You might have had a hint that your claim of x14,908 growth over this period was implausible just by noticing that your monitor was less than 14,908 pixels tall and the height for the chart at 1900 was more than 1 pixel tall. You might have also noticed that it was incompatible with your other (also false) claim that "human power" is a significant fraction of current total power use, given that the human population hasn't grown 15,000 times larger over the last 500 years, which it would have needed to for both the claim "human power is a relevant fraction today" and "x14908 growth since then" to be simultaneously true. If we were actually using 178,899 TW (not TWh/year which is what the graph you linked to is saying), the planet earth would not be a "pale blue dot" when seen from space, because we would have had to cover 80%-103% of the planet (including oceans and clouds, not just deserts and cities and forests) in something that absorbed all incoming sunlight.

tw04 3y ago

>- the Moon is extremely large; if you mined the entire Moon and covered the Earth's surface with the material, including oceans, it would form a layer about thirty miles thick I'm aware of how large the moon is. >- most of the Moon is made up of the same stuff as the Earth's crust (silica, alumina, etc) and has very little value, compared to the energy needed to get it off the Moon CURRENTLY has very little value. Just like CURRENTLY there's very little value to water in most of the world. In 500 years, without some fairly significant changes to the way we're treating the earth, that will be a VERY different story. >- if humans remove material from the Moon, the rest of it doesn't "float off into the universe", it just stays in orbit unless it is actively pushed, which would take an insane amount of energy That's the point... what exactly do you think is going to happen to earth in that scenario? >something like the entire world's electricity consumption for a billion years What was the entire world's electricity consumption 500 years ago?

ben_w 3y ago
> I'm aware of how large the moon is. Are you? Removing from the moon a cubic kilometre of solid rock per person would be a thing you'd notice in a side-by-side comparison, while being less than the optical illusion that makes it seem bigger when close to the horizon. 30 miles down is 2-3 times the Mohorovicic discontinuity between crust and mantle; 30 miles up you're above the ozone layer and the air is too thin to breathe. That's the quantity being discussed. > >- if humans remove material from the Moon, the rest of it doesn't "float off into the universe", it just stays in orbit unless it is actively pushed, which would take an insane amount of energy > That's the point... what exactly do you think is going to happen to earth in that scenario? It stays right where it is: orbiting earth. > >something like the entire world's electricity consumption for a billion years > What was the entire world's electricity consumption 500 years ago? Electricity is a red herring; consider all power of all kinds combined. 500 years ago, let's assume that meant just human muscles even though windmills and watermills existed and animal muscle was also used, just to maximise the difference. The estimated world population in 1500 was around 0.43-0.50 billion; again, let's low-ball that to 430 million. Human calorie use is about 2500/day; multiply by 430 million gets us 52.06 GW. Today, we are at 20 TW, which is a factor of 384.17 greater. The kinetic energy of the moon is about 10^27 J: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2+*+moon+mass+*+%28moon+orbital+radius+%2F+moon+orbital+period%29%5E2 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2+*+moon+mass+*+%28... which suggests it would take about 1.5 million years at current power use rates: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=9.74×10%5E26+joules+%2F+20+TW https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=9.74×10%5E26+joules+%2F... or 4016 years if I assume another 384.17 increase in the rate of human power consumption: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gregorian+years+%2F+384.17 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gr... Things which are actually likely to get us the kind of increases to our available power such that we might do this include "build a Dyson swarm", which I wouldn't rule out happening in my lifetime, but also doing that means we can do a thing called "star lifting", and we'd want to because the sun contains more interesting elements than all the planets combined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting
- tw04 3y ago
  >30 miles down is 2-3 times the Mohorovicic discontinuity between crust and mantle; 30 miles up you're above the ozone layer and the air is too thin to breathe. That's the quantity being discussed. Again, I'm aware of how large the moon is. >It stays right where it is: orbiting earth. Huh? You just asked if I understood how large the moon was, and then came to the conclusion the only thing that would happen should the moon not be there is that it would stay where it is? It would completely change the tilt of the earth, tides, etc. Do you think the spreading cloud of moon dust would have the same gravitational pull as the moon in one piece? >Electricity is a red herring; consider all power of all kinds combined. 500 years ago, let's assume that meant just human muscles even though windmills and watermills existed and animal muscle was also used, just to maximise the difference. It's very much not a red herring, and you can't have it both ways. If you're basing it on "human power" then you're going to need to calculate today's human power as well because there are endless manual labor jobs that humans still persist at today. >or 4016 years if I assume another 384.17 increase in the rate of human power consumption: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gr https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.543×10%5E6+average+Gr... Except power hasn't increased linearly over time, which I assume you know and at this point are just arguing for the sake of argument. In 1900 the total yearly power consumption of humanity was 12TW. In 2022 it was 178,899TW, an increase of 14,908x in 100 years. Assuming a 384.17 increase is a great way to make some very flawed assumptions look good. But it doesn't reflect reality. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Again, I'm aware of how large the moon is. You're not demonstrating awareness. > Huh? You just asked if I understood how large the moon was, and then came to the conclusion the only thing that would happen should the moon not be there is that it would stay where it is? It would completely change the tilt of the earth, tides, etc. Do you think the spreading cloud of moon dust would have the same gravitational pull as the moon in one piece? You appear to be mixing different things. You wrote this: > Have you stopped to think what happens to the earth if the moon were just outright gone? Because that's ultimately what the debate is about. If anything valuable is found there, you can be assured someone will strip mine it until every last piece of value is removed, and the non-valuable thing is left to float off into the universe, not their problem. Specifically focus on this bit: "the non-valuable thing is left to float off into the universe". No: it stays in orbit of the Earth. If it's not valuable, nobody's going to move it. > It's very much not a red herring, and you can't have it both ways. If you're basing it on "human power" then you're going to need to calculate today's human power as well because there are endless manual labor jobs that humans still persist at today. Since the industrial revolution, everything else has grown so much, totalling about 20 TW, that human muscle power has become a rounding error, less than 5% of that: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=8+billion+*+2500+kcal%2Fday https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=8+billion+*+2500+kcal%2... Human muscle used to be relevant. And I gave that alone for 500 years ago in order to maximise the difference between then and now, to steel-man my case. > Except power hasn't increased linearly over time, which I assume you know and at this point are just arguing for the sake of argument. I see you don't know what "linear" means. If I'd assumed linear growth from 50 GW to 20 TW (which is 20,000 GW) over the last 500 years, thats (20,000 - 50) GW/500 years, which is an insignificant difference from saying 20TW/500 years. Applying that forward would for another 500 years would look like "double", not "x384". I am in fact assuming exponential growth by suggesting a further x384 growth in the next 500 years. The exponent itself has to increase in order to get faster than this rate. > In 1900 the total yearly power consumption of humanity was 12TW. In 2022 it was 178,899TW, an increase of 14,908x in 100 years. Assuming a 384.17 increase is a great way to make some very flawed assumptions look good. But it doesn't reflect reality. I see you can't read the graph. That graph says it was 12,131 TWh/year in 1900 (which is 1.385 terawatts), and 178,899 TWh/year in 2022 (which is 20.42 terawatts). This is a change of x14.75. You might have had a hint that your claim of x14,908 growth over this period was implausible just by noticing that your monitor was less than 14,908 pixels tall and the height for the chart at 1900 was more than 1 pixel tall. You might have also noticed that it was incompatible with your other (also false) claim that "human power" is a significant fraction of current total power use, given that the human population hasn't grown 15,000 times larger over the last 500 years, which it would have needed to for both the claim "human power is a relevant fraction today" and "x14908 growth since then" to be simultaneously true. If we were actually using 178,899 TW (not TWh/year which is what the graph you linked to is saying), the planet earth would not be a "pale blue dot" when seen from space, because we would have had to cover 80%-103% of the planet (including oceans and clouds, not just deserts and cities and forests) in something that absorbed all incoming sunlight.