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You don't have to see the worlds wilderness converted to farm land. There is lots of room in the oceans, and if we get enough surplus, L-5 colonies, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and more. All of this is possible with current technology. If you are worried about things going wrong, then we definitely need more people. More people = more surplus = spaceflight = terraforming. There will always be problems, space would make a good firebreak.
My comment: I did not even mention space colonization in my little essay on Cornucopianism, only because that makes the whole problem of the limits of Malthus moot, even ridiculous, for any society rich enough to send people and gear out of Earth's gravity well, and clever enough to exploit the endless -- literally endless -- natural resources of the Final Frontier. Blow the moon into chunks of rock, give Earth a ring like Saturn, and hollow out the resulting asteroids, spin them for gravity, and just add air, soil, and water and VOILA! You and your family can live in cramped misery equal to the privates the crew of a submarine enjoy, with the additional knowledge that riot, war, or engineering failure could cause a power outage. Power outages on Earth mean you find candles and talk with your neighbors while sitting on the porch. Power outages aboard the O'Neill colony means you keep checking a medical readout clamped to your baby's ear to check on oxygen content in the bloodstream.
But I am a bit of a sceptic (despite my love of science fiction) of space colonization in the near future. The technical and economic hurtles to be cleared just look too steep to me. Why build a base on the moon, when it is cheaper to build in Antarctica? And why build in Antarctica, when vast acres in Patagonia, or even Chile, are unoccupied? Would not it be easier to move to New Mexico, and try to find (or gene-engineer) a form of cactus that can be grown and consumed in a cost-effective fashion?
I can imagine technologies that could change the cost-benefit ratio of space colonization, but I cannot imagine them being found in the near term.
Antigravity, for example, would be a nice way to lower the cost of moving mass from surface to orbit, but then again so would a flying unicorn that shoots floaty rainbows from her magic horn.
In the near future we will have to make due with space elevators or skyhooks or groundbased launching lasers or railguns or something. Chemical rockets ain't the wagontrain to the planets we were hoping they'd be.
January 11 2010, 23:49:52 UTC 2 years ago
Maybe...
What if you combine the private sector's ability to make space-flight cheaper and more efficient along with highly lucrative exploitable resources and a healthy dose of space-tourism to keep projects rolling along?For instance, Helium 3 is rare on earth but thought to be abundant on the moon. And the monetary return for the first company to exploit that could theoretically be vast.
There are real rewards for boldly going and as nuclear propulsion and other forms of propulsion are developed, I think it is quite possible that we will see the exploration, and exploitation of space and it's resources in 100 years.
Already those small companies in the Mojave Desert are wiorking to make spaceflight a real option.
January 12 2010, 04:29:18 UTC 2 years ago
Re: Maybe...
"For instance, Helium 3 is rare on earth but thought to be abundant on the moon."One of the (many) reasons why I am sceptical is the difference between for example, the way the French used the New World and the way the British did. The French sent fur trapping expeditions, whereas the British sent colonists. I can see how robots in space can be like the French model: our machines go to somewhere, the ice rings of Saturn, get something we want or need, and propel it back to us. I do not see how it can be like the British model: right now the expense is very high, and the Pilgrims on the Mayflower did not have a huge chuck of Crown money paying for them to set up a environmentally-seal submarine style living environment like a moon base or ONeill colony.
"Already those small companies in the Mojave Desert are working to make spaceflight a real option."
God bless 'em! And yet I remain dark and overcast with doubt.
If it were our grandfathers doing it, maybe something could be done. In modern day in America, you cannot even say the word "Negro" -- and it takes a certain amount of spinelessness to allow a self-appointed yammering class the authority to police your speech. We are not exactly bubbling over with the pioneering spirit. A nation where the auto manufacturing is taken over by the government, and no one even holds a riot in protest, is too wimpy, too European, to reach for the stars.
January 12 2010, 14:18:39 UTC 2 years ago
Re: Maybe...
If it were our grandfathers doing it, maybe something could be done. In modern day in America, you cannot even say the word "Negro" -- and it takes a certain amount of spinelessness to allow a self-appointed yammering class the authority to police your speech. We are not exactly bubbling over with the pioneering spirit. A nation where the auto manufacturing is taken over by the government, and no one even holds a riot in protest, is too wimpy, too European, to reach for the stars.And yet there are men who know that such actions are wrong and rail against them. This livejournal and other conservative media are proof of that. There is still the Spirit of Freedom in America. This isn't the first time we've joined in battle against this dark, evil philosophy which has already claimed over 100 million dead on it's altar. I am optimistic that we can defeat it again. I shall despair only when those good men who remain lose the faith and the will to fight.
I see our pioneering spirit as no different than this. Our expanding technological base constantly calls for more and more rare materials. All it will take is for one of those materials to be found in abundance in space and such a venture will be more than justified to the private sector. And once that happens spaceflight and space colonies become a foregone conclusion.
As to your first concern, my thought is why would future space farers need Crown money for anything? Government money brings government oversight which gurantees the projet will never get off the ground. No, I propose that private enterprise alone can innovate and streamline such procedures and technology to make space habitation a reality. And people miners, complete with living spaces on the moon or Mars, will ultimately be cheaper and more efficient that robot miners. Which is why we don't use robot miners on Earth.
It's not the Crown that'll send up up, it's the East India Company.
January 12 2010, 19:17:02 UTC 2 years ago
Robots = Productivity = Profit
And people miners, complete with living spaces on the moon or Mars, will ultimately be cheaper and more efficient that robot miners. Which is why we don't use robot miners on Earth.That depends upon what you call a robot. Mining is highly mechanized and automated. Whenever a machine is operating without constant human control, it is essentially a robot -- whether it looks like C3P0 or a big metal box.
Using human labor to do what automated machinery can do is EXPENSIVE. That's because of the low productivity of that labor. And the higher the overhead on an operation, the higher productivity must be to make that operation pay. Now matter how you square, extraterrestrial mining is going to have a huge overhead, so your miners will be robots and not people if you plan on turning a profit.
And that would be just. If a businessman has the capital available, he is not doing right by his employees if does not leverage their labor with automation, make them more productive, and pay them higher wages as a consequence. Were that not so, we should all be in the fields with spades and hoes growing the food we need to eat instead of relying upon highly automated agriculture to free us to do other productive work. Indeed, automation is so effective in increasing productivity, many of us now can even be parasites like lawyers, reality TV producers, and Nancy Pelosi.
Hmm. I might need to rethink the value of automation.
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January 14 2010, 16:57:45 UTC 2 years ago
Re: Maybe...
Neither the French nor the British model will necessarily apply to space exploration. Perhaps it will look more like the '49er model: entrepreneurs send up maintenance teams for their operations, who are followed by groups of independent entrepreneurs eager to sell their goods and services to the well-paid maintenance workers who have very little else on which to spend their money. The West Coast's wealth was not built on the gold in them thar hills, but on the economic activity of those who decided to go there. Similar expeditions to Mars or the asteroid belt might fizzle, or they might explode due to an exponential population growth, and who can say why one would happen and not the other?January 12 2010, 08:31:55 UTC 2 years ago
Re: Maybe...
Helium-3 is rare, but I think manufacturing it on earth (tritiate heavy water and wait for the Hydrogen-3 to decay to Helium-3) will be much more cost effective. Heavy water moderated nuclear power reactors received a boon when tritium was found to be useful for things besides boosting the yield of nuclear weapons, as the stuff accumulates, has to be removed, and is too radioactive to dispose of readily.In tiny amounts, it is used to make glowy things, such as the dots that allow you to see your pistol's iron sight, at night.
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January 12 2010, 00:23:07 UTC 2 years ago
If any of these areas became terra nullius open for the taking, I bet you'd see a *lot* of movement out that way. Yes, even to Antarctica.
Unfortunately, outer space is a lot like Antarctica: legal uncertainty about an exploration company's ability to take and use space stuff is retarding development. But in the long run, I'm betting that the distance and difficulty of getting to space sites from earth also mean that said sites are more likely to be claimable and therefore claimed.
January 12 2010, 04:33:41 UTC 2 years ago
The topic is complex, and I am not as well versed in it as I'd like, but the upshot is that the type of society where safety regs are paramount, and where the Moon belongs to Everyone, rather than to Delos D. Harriman, provides disincentives for private exploration and exploitation of space.
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January 14 2010, 16:48:38 UTC 2 years ago
Fusion: permanently the technology of the future?
Not that it's the most impressive endorsement, but the Canadian government seems to think it's worth funding.January 12 2010, 01:06:48 UTC 2 years ago
Skylon is a design by Reaction Engines Limited (managed by British rocket scientist Alan Bond) for an airbreathing single-stage to orbit, precooled air turboramjet based spaceplane. A fleet of vehicles is envisaged; each vehicle would be reusable at least 200 times. Costs per kilogram of payload would be below the current costs of launch (as of 2006[update]), including the costs of R&D, with costs expected to fall much more over time after the initial expenditures have amortised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_
The Virgin Galactic spaceline plans to operate a fleet of five of these craft in passenger-carrying private spaceflight service starting no earlier than 2011
While not instant Star Trek, these above look promising.
January 12 2010, 02:53:41 UTC 2 years ago
I'm skeptical, but hopeful. I am hopeful that the first actual colonists off Earth will be political and religious refugees. Middle-class Americans fed-up with paying for a swelling underclass of citizens and being taxed for old-fashioned values like thrift and hard work. Fed-up with having their treasure drained by the government.
I believe I saw the future in the news this week. Item 1: the government wants to siphon off a portion of everyone's 401k/IRA account into t-bills. Item 2: the government wants make it illegal to tap your IRA funds in the event of a rush on the bank.
In the long run the government has a long arm and the few places the government could not reach will not be places a Westerner could live.
And there are the religious. In the 17th century a dissident group with enough funds to charter a ship could just go with a lot of fuss and a royal charter. That outlet is all but closed, now. Soon the only place left to go for the extreme to find true religious freedom will be straight up.
But I'm skeptical. This can't happen until there is cheap transport to space. The government will never give a horde of dissident neo-Mormons and disaffected middle-class Americans a ride to the Moon: they'll have to charter the flight and build New Deseret with their own funds.
If there are spacecraft available for charter, I think they can do it: Americans know how to be thrifty and save, and they'll have a lot of incentive to save their captial to secure a place up there.
January 12 2010, 04:43:08 UTC 2 years ago
If I forget thee ...
If I forget thee, O Terra, let my right hand forget its cunning ....January 12 2010, 13:59:39 UTC 2 years ago
Re: If I forget thee ...
Maybe.Thinking about this I'm reminded not of Jerusalem but the Scotch-Irish. They left England, came to the New World. When they went up and over the Blue Ridge they didn't drag the 18th century with them: they departed it entirely and didn't look back.
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January 12 2010, 13:00:48 UTC 2 years ago
Strategic high ground. I'd argue that the treaties restricting the military use of space were a significant damper on development of space technologies.
January 12 2010, 15:18:14 UTC 2 years ago
Good point
That's a good point; both of them.January 12 2010, 16:38:37 UTC 2 years ago
So the Cold War was good for the space program. Unfortunately, the current war is with low-tech troglodytes (training in American and British schools, and sons of oil sheiks and bankers, but still)
January 12 2010, 19:38:38 UTC 2 years ago
Cold War & Big Rockets
So the Cold War was good for the space program.No doubt the Cold War spurred the space race. But I believe that the strategic military demand for ballistic missilery saddled us with the Saturn rocket program that limited our manned explorations of space to moonshots. Hence, no substantial space station development over the past half-century.
Then again, unmanned exploration has been a great success in the interim, treaties limiting military use of space were driven by its unsuitability rather than its practicality for military operations, and I have yet to see an economic rationale for exploiting extraterrestrial resources. (Though I'm sure that will change in the future.) So maybe Von Braun's big rocket fetish didn't stunt the manning of space in any serious way.
Meanwhile, we've got a whole lotta Earth to work with far into the future.
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January 13 2010, 01:39:52 UTC 2 years ago
Just picture it: "Welcome to New New York! Primary exports: fish, salt, algae-oil and full sun fruits and veggies!"
My mind paints a picture of a city that looks something like a giant soap bubble floating on the ocean, every roof under the bubble covered with plants....
January 13 2010, 04:13:31 UTC 2 years ago
January 25 2010, 16:54:15 UTC 2 years ago
Which, if I may point back to the original post, makes once again the point that Malthus was simply wrong, and that famines and shortages are not caused by Nature's larder running low, but rather by inefficient (meaning unfree, non-capitalist) political economic systems. Overpopulation for hunter gatherers was a few men in a large number of acres; for farmers or herdsmen, that would be underpopulation.