(no subject)

[danieldwilliam]

I have just read this post by Charles Stross which I was pointed towards by the ever fantastic andrewducker  .

 In it Stross talks about the likelihood of human colonisation of interstellar space. There follows a discussion of the human colonisation of the solar system. Basing his views on a combination of economics and physics he was sceptical that we would be successful or even try unless there were a change in the available technology radical enough to be considered magical. Basically, his argument is that other stars are too far away, we’d need too much energy and there is nothing out there that is worth going to.

 He has a point. When you think about it without allowing a massive volutarist drive and using the actual numbers interstellar colonisation looks a massively daunting task. It looks like it would be an undertaking wholly unlike anything tried before.

 I think you have to consider these things incrementally. The whole problem does not have to be solved all in one go. So long as there is a sufficient economic or ideological imperative today people will find a way to move to the next stage. In hindsight this will look like a ladder but will really be a drunken walk. Innovation is usually the application of existing technology and Henry Ford to new problems or in new ways.

 Each solution to a problem nudges the system so that a new set of problems and opportunities emerge. The history of the Roman empire can be understood as a series of border wars. In its early days Rome did not have a settled policy of expansion. A series of immediate responses to the difficulties of a then current border situation brought about by the solution of problems of the previous border situation that drove the expansion outwards. So I think it will be with interstellar colonisation. A series of stages which each include their own set of problems and opportunities to solve those problems. Each solution must be valuable to the people involved in that stage regardless of its contribution to the greater aim.

 The stages are roughly.

 

1.       Have economic activity in Earth orbit

2.       Have economic activity in Earth orbit which requires people to be there

3.       Have people living in Earth orbit.

4.       Have people live in the Inner Solar System

5.       Have people live in the Outer Solar System

6.       Fill up the available space

7.       Send a colony ship.

 

At each stage there is a drive to move to the next stage. Someone will be made better off in some way by expanding. They need to be, why else would anyone move to the next stage.

 An early problem to which there is no current solution is getting off our own planet in a sustainable way. This probably requires a space elevator although my Space Bagel concept might also work. To build a space elevator one requires the right materials and a way of temporally  getting off the planet cheaply. Cheap access to Earth orbit is already economically valuable. So are the sorts of materials that would be needed to build a space lift. At some point someone will crack the problem of making them and then making them cheaply enough.

 I think we’ll solve cheap access to Earth orbit first. We seem to have plenty of people who are trying to achieve it. This will probably lead to more economic activity in space and more exploration of space. We’ll find things worth exploiting. We already know some valuable things are out there. Great hunks of metallic asteroid and lots and lots of sunshine.

 In order for colonisation of Earth orbit to take off there need to be both pushes and pulls that over come the economic costs and dislocations. 

 The Earth will soon have a population of 9 billion. If they all wish to live as Americans do we require a lot more energy and a lot more food than we currently have. More than we can currently produce. We’ll also start to run low on various useful metals. We’ll be polluting more than the ecosystem can cope with. Livings standards will be under pressure as will our survival.

  Food, however, is a function of space and energy. There are plenty of metal rich asteroids kicking about the place. Pollution in a closed system is a problem solvable with sufficient energy. So there is an economic argument for building a space elevator to connect lots of orbiting farms and factories to markets on Earth. Space and energy is plentiful and there is plenty of stuff up there to turn into other stuff that you can sell on Earth. These facilities will require management and maintenance. There would now be full time jobs in space.

 After a while, people may or may not be fed up of commuting up and down the elevator. They may meet and fall in love with someone on a different cycle of tours to themselves and want to raise children. There may well be a number of people who actively want to live in space because it is cool. People may or may not become sick of the risk of radiation exposure and be prepared to pay to have the problem solved. The situation on Earth may become more crowded. At some point there will be the risk of war, or oppression, or ideological clash. There will be an economic benefit in solving the problems of living in the long term in space. I suggest that at some point this collection of problems and opportunities will be solved and people will begin to live as well as work in space. Starting at first for a few years, then extending for most or all of their lives.

 Turning to ideological considerations if you were Chinese or Russian or European would you be happy watching the Americans head off into space with all the energy, stuff and, well space up there. We couldn’t allow a space station gap to emerge, Madam President. Whilst putting resources into space exploration and colonisation may not necessarily always be rational on its own account in the context of avoiding being outflanked by a national rival it may make more sense.

 This creates a drive for many people to live and work in orbit around Earth. This creates problems and opportunities. Shifting raw stuff from the asteroid belt to Earth is more expensive than shifting high value finished stuff to Earth. Put another way, what is the difference between the asteroid belt and Brazil? The space around Earth will become crowded in time. People will want to move out to the burbs. People who were born up there won’t see the way  they live as unnatural or unpleasant. Thinking about Brazil some more, at some the people up there stop just gathering stuff and turning it into useful stuff to send “home”. They start wanting to use some of the stuff themselves.

 And so we gently and slowly roll outwards as the sets of problem and opportunity resolve themselves into new, expanded solutions.

 By the time we have filled the solar system there will be trillions of us. We begin to approach some kind of Dyson encirclement.

 Two big problems remain. 

 It is a long way to the stars. I will be dead long before I get there. However, the economic and commercial benefit of longevity treatments is obvious before, and separate from, wanting to go to the stars. With billions of people, then trillions, there is a lot of science going on. Lots of people will be paid handsomely for trying to solve this problem.

 Then there are the energy problems. These are best solved with some very large infrastructure. Stross suggests that in order to launch sufficiently large ships into interstellar space I need to persuade lots of people to do something that has no economic benefit to them. This is not true. I need to persuade a smaller number who are sufficiently rich that between us we can afford to pay lots of people to build us the infrastructure and sell us the energy.

 You don’t need to like flying to make money working for an airline.

 Bearing in mind that the energy required is about 5 second worth of the Earth’s total electricity production at the moment and by the time we are contemplating this we will be harnessing a significant proportion of the Sun’s output the energy required to send something quite big out of the solar system will be a relatively small proportion of the total energy budget of the solar system.

 I think it likely that, from a population of trillions and trillions we might find a few people who thought it sufficiently worthwhile to sell everything they owned and leave the solar system. They may be religiously driven, or ideologically driven. They may be scientists or rebels or explorers or nutcases or some exciting combination of some or all of the above.

 At some point it is likely that the longevity problem and the infrastructure problem will be solved at the same time and solvable by drivers that are inherent in the situation as it then presents itself. There is no need for voluntarism in these scenarios. At least not on the part of the population who will not benefit directly from interstellar colonisation.  

 Off we go.