> An unlimited growth in a finite environment isn't possible, it's called instability.
but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in resources...
but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in resources...
Our immediate environment aside from Earth is the vastness of the solar system, in planets totally unsuitable to support us, and with extreme costs to even get us to the nearest one, and with vast expanses of space and radiation to go through to get to the next.
We got humans to the closest rock for a few years, on a huge cost and effort, and with big risks (and some casualties), based on the competition of 2 superpowers. Since then, not only we haven't established any "base", but we haven't even been there for 48+ years (almost half a century)...
And even if by a very slim chance (which people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale take for granted) we manage to do something in those planets, the next step (some earth like habitable planet elsewhere) is extremely more challenging, and speed of light limits would apply (of course people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale bypass them with exotic contraptions that have us riding wormholes and what have you...).
And that's if war and climate mayhem doesn't have us concentrate all our efforts here...
Some food for though: don't concentrate on the pedantic details, but the high level arguments:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth...
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...
The thing is, you and I are no more qualified to speculate on the future than someone from 100 years ago would be qualified to speculate on the Internet. However I can say one thing: if we even make a fraction of the progress in the next 100 years compared to the progress in the last, I don’t think we have anything to worry about when it comes to energy or transportation.
I'd say we are.
We don't expect the speed of light to change for example. Whereas people in the 1800s didn't have any such hard limit (e.g. based on Newtonian theory).
We also have the benefit of hindsight, and can see the rate of technical development (and e.g. that the low hanging fruit were on the late 19th century, increasing on early 20th century, and dropping down after the later half of the 20th century.
>However I can say one thing: if we even make a fraction of the progress in the next 100 years compared to the progress in the last, I don’t think we have anything to worry about when it comes to energy or transportation.
Compared to the progress in the last 100 years, or the last 50 years? Because already the progress in the last 50 years is laughable compared to the progress up until 1970 or so.
E.g. we had electricity, nuclear energy, combustion engine, radio, tv, film, digital imaging, lasers, microwaves, satellites, internet, computers, airplanes, transistors, rockets, radars, and tons of other fundamentals already available by 1960s -- not so much huge progress later on aside from evolutionary stuff.
(Well, we did have the slinky)
shouldn't the internet be considered the greatest achievement yet?
When was the last time a new technology reached commercial success?
Besides we're not talking about mere products here, but core technologies, e.g. inventions. The steam engine, the combustion engine, electricity, the telephone, laser, microwave, satellites, and so on, weren't mere "applications of other technologies" and even less so a mere incremental bump in the way modern internet vs 60s/70s internet is.
Do we even have the raw resources on earth / the tech to move everyone to a new planet and terraform it before we're all toast ?
Even if we do what's your moral standpoint on the fact that humanity destroyed 3+ billion years of evolution on earth in a few hundred years ?
Who in their right mind think that terraforming a planet is easier than just stopping destroying our home planet ?
Even if we do move to a new planet, in what kind of conditions will we live, I doubt we'd have even 10% f the comfort we have today. So why not scale down here, on earth, in the first place ?
didn't the earth go thru numerous planet-wide extinction events? and those were much much faster than a few hundred years.
In which case it will be little consolation that amoebas or even cockroaches and squirrels might survive...
But sure in the big scheme of things it's not changing much, it's more of a personal / moral position.
A good analogy is the Eiffel tower, you can remove a bolt, 10 bolts, 100 bolts, it'll still hold fine, remove one too many and it'll collapse. The metal will still be there (earth) but it won't be the Eiffel tower anymore (Life).
> The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates.
a moon base would cost upwards of 20 billion USD.
the increase in the US military budget for FY2018 is 58 billion USD, bringing it to a total of 639 billion USD. that's just for FY2018. there is currently no world war.
> Do we even have the raw resources on earth / the tech to move everyone to a new planet and terraform it before we're all toast ?
no one mentioned anything about terraforming or moving people in this thread. i made a comment regarding finite resources, which aren't finite if you just look at the sky instead of the ground.
It doesn;t have much to do with the original topic, but I think you're way underestimating it.
Per capita energy usage is about 6 MWh / year and our population has been doubling every 53 years. Assuming that continues, in 10000 years we'll be using 4e69 Wh / year. If we figure out 100% conversion of mass to energy, that's 1e56 kg of fuel, which is a lot more than all the matter in the visible universe.
You can play with these numbers a little, but even reducing the energy usage per person by a million only gives us another 1000 years. Soon we'll be growing so fast that every year we'll use all the resources within one light-year.
Get a human permanently and self-sufficiently out of LEO and i'll agree a limited part of the solar system is our environment.
For the foreseeable future our environment is earth and not a lot else.
We have a very real thing happening right now on earth with extreme consequences: major species extinction, air pollution, water pollution, soon to be ecological refugees, &c. But the answer is mining asteroid and having a moon base.
Why would we care about asteroid gold and the few (<100) people that might go to the moon and live an extremely strenuous life. It's not like we'll all go to the moon, crack open a cold one and watch the moon superbowl.
If you change your sense of scale from a few years to a few hundred, yeah, I think it’s likely humanity will be watching the moon superbowl, in fact it’s probably the most dull and conservative view of the future someone could have.
Not to mention they're still vaporware... Brochures are easy.
In 30 years Miami might be under the waters, and we'd still be extremely lucky if we have a 200 sq ft base on the moon.
(On which a man haven't even set foot for the last 48 years).
scientific progress.
Even the moon which is the closest stable near earth resource is at least a couple of decades away from any practical use.
Chances are that the climate of earth will become more unstable before any kind of space based economy can really be taken seriously.