Solarised Trade and Infrastructure.

Tom Kalbfus · 2008-05-24 08:55:05

yup!
Not only that, we don't even have the materials to create a space elevator. We've only a basic concept. Even if we did, all sort of little problems could creep up on us. Perhaps uneven heating of the tether could cause it to weather and snap. A good portion of its is in space and would be subject to rapid heating and cooling. The temperature at the base is going to be much different cause its in Earth atmosphere etc etc I don't know if those will be problems - but they could be and things like that will make the costs sky rocket.

We can (and should) do space exploration. Its brilliant to extend our presence off Earth, settle and explore the universe. We can build infrastructure for that, to bring industry, trade and transport to outer space.
Its not a magic bullet for the Earth problems. Whiltst we're colonizing outer space, we're also going to be coming up with practical and afforadable solutions to Earth's problems at the same time!!!
To quell the Earth population explosion, we should be thinking of ways to be increase the standard of living in poor and developing countries. Approx a Billion people are living in poverty today. Most of the diseases these people suffer from are relatively easy and affordable to treat. Education and better job opportunities also help.
In the developed industrial countries (Japan, USA, Europe) , the Birth rate tends to decline and become stable Its only in the poorer regions of the planet that the population is exploding out of control.

To ensure humanity's long term survival, we need an expanding population, not a declining one. We need to get into space and expand our numbers, and perhaps make raising our children a little easier by making allowances for stay at home housewives. The more people we have, the more minds to solve problems like the ones confronting us with space exploration. I grew up in an age of discovery and progress, and since then things have slowed down, people have started putting things off and procrastinating. Why does it take twenty years to build a fusion reactor anyway? Why do we keep on putting off going to Mars? After the Apollo Moon landings, the Democrats took control of congress and it seems they said, "Hey wait a minute, lets slow down here!" Nixon was complicit with them too, he was one of those "moderates", much like McCain is today. We need someone with ambition. If we want to build a space elevator and we allocate enough resource to the project, we can build one. Just like we built the Atomic Bomb.

Midoshi · 2008-05-24 10:48:54

Tom Kalbfus, I think it comes down to incentive. With the atomic bomb the Americans were afraid someone else might do it first and use it against them. With getting to the moon the Americans had been embarassed by the Russians in space every step of the way previously, and wanted to get there first.

There's a lack of perception that we "need" fusion because (despite what some people say) the Earth still contains at least couple thousand years worth of coal and oil we could burn. Of course, this would screw our atmosphere up royally, but the point is that up till now there's been no revolutionary drive for alternative power. That may change sooner than we run out of coal, of course.

With a space elevator it's the same catch 22: companies aren't willing to invest until they see something that works, but nothing can be developed until someone invests! As you noted, that vicious cycle can be overturned by someone with ambition, but they also have to find good reasons with which to persuade people. There are tons of such reasons for the space elevator, but I suspect that so far none are compelling enough for investors.

Rune · 2008-05-24 13:09:52

Just one little problem that makes the question moot. How many people could you lift a day from a single space elevator? Say 500 in ten rides of 50 for argument's sake. How many total space elevators can you build? Say you have 100 (that sucker's gotta cost). That gets you 50.000 humans in orbit every day. Don't forget that you still have to send them somewhere. How many people are born every day? For a population of 10 billion that doubles every 25 years, 10*10e9/(25*365)=1.095.890 new "passenegers" every day.
No one said there had to be only one space elevator to "rule them all!" The Earth has room for plenty of space elevators. The first space elevator makes constructing the second and the third cheaper. Space elevators also don't have to be built right on the equator, there is plenty of leeway for location.
If one space elevator transports 50,000 in a year, two will transport 100,000, twenty will transport 1,000,000, and two thousand will do a whole billion in a single year, but who said they all have to be gone in a year? If you present the problem so it will seem impossible, it will seem impossible.

As you may have noticed if you had read the post carefully, I've assumed that you have 100 space elevators working 24/7 and each of ten daily rides takes 50 people.

Anyhow, if you REALLY think getting off-planet 1 million people a day is a solution, much less a feasible one, I'm afraid I have to disagree on principle.

By the way, the "double every 25 years" is a figure wich has repeated itself historically (more or less) every time humanity has had the resources for the expansion. Basic Antropology, i've been told.

Rune. Paradoxically enough, we have the exact growth rate of one kind of animals: pests.

Gregori · 2008-05-24 16:07:08

yup!
Not only that, we don't even have the materials to create a space elevator. We've only a basic concept. Even if we did, all sort of little problems could creep up on us. Perhaps uneven heating of the tether could cause it to weather and snap. A good portion of its is in space and would be subject to rapid heating and cooling. The temperature at the base is going to be much different cause its in Earth atmosphere etc etc I don't know if those will be problems - but they could be and things like that will make the costs sky rocket.

We can (and should) do space exploration. Its brilliant to extend our presence off Earth, settle and explore the universe. We can build infrastructure for that, to bring industry, trade and transport to outer space.
Its not a magic bullet for the Earth problems. Whiltst we're colonizing outer space, we're also going to be coming up with practical and afforadable solutions to Earth's problems at the same time!!!
To quell the Earth population explosion, we should be thinking of ways to be increase the standard of living in poor and developing countries. Approx a Billion people are living in poverty today. Most of the diseases these people suffer from are relatively easy and affordable to treat. Education and better job opportunities also help.
In the developed industrial countries (Japan, USA, Europe) , the Birth rate tends to decline and become stable Its only in the poorer regions of the planet that the population is exploding out of control.
To ensure humanity's long term survival, we need an expanding population, not a declining one. We need to get into space and expand our numbers, and perhaps make raising our children a little easier by making allowances for stay at home housewives. The more people we have, the more minds to solve problems like the ones confronting us with space exploration. I grew up in an age of discovery and progress, and since then things have slowed down, people have started putting things off and procrastinating. Why does it take twenty years to build a fusion reactor anyway? Why do we keep on putting off going to Mars? After the Apollo Moon landings, the Democrats took control of congress and it seems they said, "Hey wait a minute, lets slow down here!" Nixon was complicit with them too, he was one of those "moderates", much like McCain is today. We need someone with ambition. If we want to build a space elevator and we allocate enough resource to the project, we can build one. Just like we built the Atomic Bomb.

to ensure humanities survival, we need a stable, balanced an highly educated population. If we allow the populous to explode every natural resource will be consumed and the effects on planet will be pretty horrendous. There is no lack of brilliant and intelligent people on the planet to make great breakthroughs and innovation. There is a lack of support for these people and for pushing through their brilliance. Corporations don't really do it because they're only concerned with what's immediately profitable. they don't like taking risks.

I don't think as many women are all that enchanted about being house-slaves either.

Billions have been spent on fusion - the most brilliant minds have worked on it. This is just an inherently complicated engineering problem. its very very difficult, much more than fission.

After Apollo, somebody had to pay the bills.(also after vietnam) A mission to mars is really complicated and expensive. maybe had the shuttle been avoided and saturn V continued in some capacity we would be there sooner, but thats history now...

Terraformer · 2008-05-25 08:18:24

If we had cheap access to space, why would those still on Earth have to survive only on what the Earth can provide? Wouldn't a lot of stuff be coming in from space?

For instance, all land given over to manufacturing and mining could be given over to farming, supplemented by off planet farms.

Humans would have to live in, Arcol, arcol, arcologies, but so what?

Gregori · 2008-05-25 09:15:17

If we had cheap access to space, why would those still on Earth have to survive only on what the Earth can provide? Wouldn't a lot of stuff be coming in from space?
For instance, all land given over to manufacturing and mining could be given over to farming, supplemented by off planet farms.
Humans would have to live in, Arcol, arcol, arcologies, but so what?

Maybe, but we don't have cheap access to space and won't have for a long time. Even the most promising future technologies will still make access to space very very expensive. Anything on Earth is always going to be cheaper for a long long time. The Earth still has has a lot of materials that are much cheaper to access than anything in space.

In short, Its not a solution to Earth's problems for next few decades.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue manned space flight and viable colonies!

The best way to support such colonies would be to limit the amount of materials that need to come from Earth's gravity well. We achieve that by Investing in establishing space based infrastructure and industry on the Moon, NEO's, Mars, Asteroid Belt, Titan, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Io etc etc

This will eventually pay off big time.

Terraformer · 2008-05-27 04:44:53

Surely bulk cargo coming from space would be pretty cheap? Just wrap your steel or whatever in a heatshield, give it a parachute, a small computer and drop it through the atmosphere. You haven't got live cargo to protect so you can afford to have a few losses.

Rune · 2008-05-27 08:11:19

Terraformer, if the space colonists had a comparable population to that of earth, or some mighty technological miracle to let them produce so much (100% automated, self replicating robotic factories?) maybe they would be able to supply earth AND themselves.

Not going to happen tomorrow or in fifty years, though. We are still going to have to solve our resource-dependancy here on earth sooner than that.

Rune. World-scale problems require world-scale solutions.

Tom Kalbfus · 2008-05-27 08:42:46

Just one little problem that makes the question moot. How many people could you lift a day from a single space elevator? Say 500 in ten rides of 50 for argument's sake. How many total space elevators can you build? Say you have 100 (that sucker's gotta cost). That gets you 50.000 humans in orbit every day. Don't forget that you still have to send them somewhere. How many people are born every day? For a population of 10 billion that doubles every 25 years, 10*10e9/(25*365)=1.095.890 new "passenegers" every day.
No one said there had to be only one space elevator to "rule them all!" The Earth has room for plenty of space elevators. The first space elevator makes constructing the second and the third cheaper. Space elevators also don't have to be built right on the equator, there is plenty of leeway for location.
If one space elevator transports 50,000 in a year, two will transport 100,000, twenty will transport 1,000,000, and two thousand will do a whole billion in a single year, but who said they all have to be gone in a year? If you present the problem so it will seem impossible, it will seem impossible.
As you may have noticed if you had read the post carefully, I've assumed that you have 100 space elevators working 24/7 and each of ten daily rides takes 50 people.

100 space elevators daily makes 10 trips per day each carrying 50 people, That is 50,000 people a day!
There are 365 days in a year, thats 18,250,000 people in a single year! At that rate, it looks like we won't need much more than 100 space elevators, for it would only take 55 years to transport one billion people off Earth. Sure we could add another billion through natural birth in 55 years or less. I think space travel follows the law of supply and demand just like everything else, if space elevators reduce cost enough, there is no reason why billions of people couldn't travel into space. Space elevators are tiny compared to the surface of the Earth, you could fit as many as you need to accomodate as many as want to go that have the money to pay for it. If the space elevator, once established, is operated on a profit and loss basis, then the operators will build as many space elevators as they need to accomodate demand and maximize their profits, there would be no more going "hat in hand" to Congress seeking more money to build additional elevators, once the first one is proven.

Anyhow, if you REALLY think getting off-planet 1 million people a day is a solution, much less a feasible one, I'm afraid I have to disagree on principle.
By the way, the "double every 25 years" is a figure wich has repeated itself historically (more or less) every time humanity has had the resources for the expansion. Basic Antropology, i've been told.

Rune. Paradoxically enough, we have the exact growth rate of one kind of animals: pests.

We don't have to bring pests with us into space as Gerard O'Neill once pointed out. Agriculture would occur in seperate cylinders, we would cook the soil to kill off all the pests, introduce only the organisms we need to grow the crops, and plant seeds in steril soil, the fruits and vegitables would be perfectly organically grown with no pesticide, and if the operation expands enough, some produce may even be exported down to Earth thus free up agricultural lands to regrow forests and expand the natural habitat. Imagine an Earth that just consists of pollution-free cities, suburbs, and parkland. Those endless square miles of cornfields, wheat, and cattle would be gone, replaces with bison, deer, and forests. The human race would be supported off-Earth. It doesn't take much energy to drops crates full of produce through the Earth's atmosphere, the materials would be obtained in space, probably from asteroids, and from those we could grow crops that would feed billions on both Earth and space. Our biggest footprint is our agricultural areas by the way, without those, much of the former farmland would go wild once again.

A person walking through the country side in the 22nd century might find tall timbers growing in Ohio, farmhouses sitting in the middle of forests with perhaps a neatly mowed lawn surrounding it. The people living in the farmhouse would no longer be farmers. Plenty of stonewalls and abandoned rusty old farm tractors, a relic of the age of terrestrial agriculture perhaps serving as nests for squirrels and birds.

Tom Kalbfus · 2008-05-27 08:50:46

Surely bulk cargo coming from space would be pretty cheap? Just wrap your steel or whatever in a heatshield, give it a parachute, a small computer and drop it through the atmosphere. You haven't got live cargo to protect so you can afford to have a few losses.

The agricultural growing area in space could eventually dwarf the growing surface on Earth. There is a limit on the amount of sunshine that reaches Earth, but in space, you have the potential surface area of an imaginary sphere equivalent to 3 billion Earths worth of farmland at 1 AU. There is plenty of room in the Solar System. The asteroids, if rendered into habitable cylinders could equal the equivalent farming area of thousands of Earths, after those there are the comets, and small moons of the gas giants, long before we could possibly use up all the material within the Solar System, we would be travelling to other star systems. The speed of light doesn't prevent us from going to distant star systems, only from getting there quickly.

Tom Kalbfus · 2008-05-27 08:56:16

Terraformer, if the space colonists had a comparable population to that of earth, or some mighty technological miracle to let them produce so much (100% automated, self replicating robotic factories?) maybe they would be able to supply earth AND themselves.
Not going to happen tomorrow or in fifty years, though. We are still going to have to solve our resource-dependancy here on earth sooner than that.

Rune. World-scale problems require world-scale solutions.

AI robotics and especially nanotechnology are definitely "wildcards" that I may or may not choose to play in presenting my arguments. I think that if nanotechnology happens in the 21st century all bets are off, it really is hard to say what is and isn't possible with self-assembling molecular machines. Even more conventional AI robots open up many possibilities, if a human can build them, then equally capable AI robots can also build themselves. The process of conventional macroscale robots replicating themselves is more complicated than self-assembling molecules, but really all that is necessary is for them to take our places on the factory floor that builds them.

I think we may eventually have to share our Solar System with electronic beings or AIs, but the benefits that accrue to us would outweigh the additional resources they would consume. AI robots would expand our capability tremendously, terraforming Mars would seem like child's play by comparison.

Rune · 2008-05-27 10:33:28

Tom, I don't know if you just haven't understood any of my points at all or if you're conciously ingnoring them:

100 space elevators daily makes 10 trips per day each carrying 50 people, That is 50,000 people a day!
There are 365 days in a year, thats 18,250,000 people in a single year! At that rate, it looks like we won't need much more than 100 space elevators, for it would only take 55 years to transport one billion people off Earth. Sure we could add another billion through natural birth in 55 years or less. I think space travel follows the law of supply and demand just like everything else, if space elevators reduce cost enough, there is no reason why billions of people couldn't travel into space. Space elevators are tiny compared to the surface of the Earth, you could fit as many as you need to accomodate as many as want to go that have the money to pay for it. If the space elevator, once established, is operated on a profit and loss basis, then the operators will build as many space elevators as they need to accomodate demand and maximize their profits, there would be no more going "hat in hand" to Congress seeking more money to build additional elevators, once the first one is proven.

If you get out of earth 50K people a day, and a million are born the same day, you end up with a larger population in earth the next day. In the course of a year, more yet. YOU DON'T SOLVE EARTH'S POPULATION PROBLEM AT ALL.

Anyhow, if you REALLY think getting off-planet 1 million people a day is a solution, much less a feasible one, I'm afraid I have to disagree on principle.
By the way, the "double every 25 years" is a figure wich has repeated itself historically (more or less) every time humanity has had the resources for the expansion. Basic Antropology, i've been told.

Rune. Paradoxically enough, we have the exact growth rate of one kind of animals: pests.
We don't have to bring pests with us into space as Gerard O'Neill once pointed out. Agriculture would occur in seperate cylinders, we would cook the soil to kill off all the pests, introduce only the organisms we need to grow the crops, and plant seeds in steril soil, the fruits and vegitables would be perfectly organically grown with no pesticide, and if the operation expands enough, some produce may even be exported down to Earth thus free up agricultural lands to regrow forests and expand the natural habitat. Imagine an Earth that just consists of pollution-free cities, suburbs, and parkland. Those endless square miles of cornfields, wheat, and cattle would be gone, replaces with bison, deer, and forests. The human race would be supported off-Earth. It doesn't take much energy to drops crates full of produce through the Earth's atmosphere, the materials would be obtained in space, probably from asteroids, and from those we could grow crops that would feed billions on both Earth and space. Our biggest footprint is our agricultural areas by the way, without those, much of the former farmland would go wild once again.

With pests I was talking about humans: we tend to reproduce and increase our numbers until we have depleted local resources, then move on to new places (emigrate) or die. We should work on that.

Terraformer, if the space colonists had a comparable population to that of earth, or some mighty technological miracle to let them produce so much (100% automated, self replicating robotic factories?) maybe they would be able to supply earth AND themselves.
Not going to happen tomorrow or in fifty years, though. We are still going to have to solve our resource-dependancy here on earth sooner than that.

Rune. World-scale problems require world-scale solutions.
AI robotics and especially nanotechnology are definitely "wildcards" that I may or may not choose to play in presenting my arguments. I think that if nanotechnology happens in the 21st century all bets are off, it really is hard to say what is and isn't possible with self-assembling molecular machines. Even more conventional AI robots open up many possibilities, if a human can build them, then equally capable AI robots can also build themselves. The process of conventional macroscale robots replicating themselves is more complicated than self-assembling molecules, but really all that is necessary is for them to take our places on the factory floor that builds them.
I think we may eventually have to share our Solar System with electronic beings or AIs, but the benefits that accrue to us would outweigh the additional resources they would consume. AI robots would expand our capability tremendously, terraforming Mars would seem like child's play by comparison.

Now THIS ONE I just don't get. What exactly has it got got to do with what I just said? Anyhow, I'm sure it makes some kind of sense to you, so please enlighten me.

Don't get offended, I just don't see the point of quoting me if what you're going to say has nothing to do with it.

Rune. Dialectically confused.

Terraformer · 2008-05-27 11:28:47

Why are you talking about Space Elevators anyway/ I doubt even CNTs are going to have the required strength. (What is the thing about strength anyway?)

We could already farm on Airships, if people hadn't forgotten about them.

JoshNH4H · 2008-05-27 19:26:04

that doesn't increace farming area, just raises the farms and blocks light. Maybe they were forgotten for a reason.

Terraformer · 2008-05-28 09:04:47

Using that excuse, farming in Orbit doesn't increase farming area, it just raises the farms and blocks light. Planes don't cast a shadow over the ground when they fly over. Why? Because they're high up.

People forgot about Airships because they're afraid no-one is going to realise the stupidity of coating a blimp in THERMITE.

JoshNH4H · 2008-05-28 13:43:16

actually, there is a significant increace in area at, say GEO. Also, they would be less prone to eclipse the earth. My only point was that airships add complexity for really very few gains.

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