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posted by martyb on Monday July 17 2017, @02:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the postponing-the-inevitable dept.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talked about his vision for Blue Origin and humanity at the Apollo 11 Gala at Kennedy Space Center:

For Bezos, colonising space is a more a simple necessity for continued life on Earth. The compound effect of the incremental increase in energy requirements will mean us having to cover every inch of Earth in solar cells, he said, while the solar system offers virtually unlimited energy resources.

"We can harvest resources from asteroids, from Near-Earth Objects, and harvest solar energy from a much broader surface area – and continue to do amazing things," he said. The alternative, he said, was an era of stasis and stagnation on Earth, where we are forced to control population and limit energy usage per capita.

"I don't think stasis is compatible with freedom or liberty, and I sure as hell think it's going to be a very boring world – I want my grandchildren's grandchildren to be in a world of pioneering, exploration and expansion throughout the solar system."

He also suggested that exploration and colonisation of the solar system would make it possible to support one trillion people.

"Then we would have 1,000 Einstein's and 1,000 Mozarts, how cool would that be?" he said.

"What's holding us back from making that next step is that space travel is just too darned expensive because we throw the rockets away. We need to build reusable rockets and that's what Blue Origin is dedicated to."


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by idiot_king on Monday July 17 2017, @04:27AM (6 children)

    by idiot_king (6587) on Monday July 17 2017, @04:27AM (#540172)

    I've noticed a trend with multibillionaires and their obsession with having as many people as possible on Earth (or, in this case, the solar system).
    Why is this? Well, it can be answered with a simple axiom: Capitalists see other sentient beings as capital. So it only makes sense that the rich want to see more dollar signs floating about the cosmos. After all, it's interesting that often you hear about things like eating bugs to cut down on (the barbaric practice of) meat consumption while at the same time donating large amounts of aid to impoverished nations which have out-of-control birthrates as it is. The whole point of this? Capitalist subversion, plain and simple.
    The reality is that the current population curve is a bubble (if you don't believe me, look at a graph of population over the past 2000 years and look at a graph of "The 5 Stages of a Bubble" and tell me if they look similar). If a billionaire wants billions floating about the cosmos, it's because that man has been infected with the Capitalist sickness and sees people nothing other than sacks of skin filled with gold. And thus the "Boom and Bust" cycle continues, only this time, with human lives. A truly dangerous game; Marx is turning in his grave! "God" help us...

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday July 17 2017, @05:15AM (2 children)

    by isostatic (365) on Monday July 17 2017, @05:15AM (#540188) Journal

    I thought the conspiracy theorys were all about how billionaire new-world-order types wanted to curtail population?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:55AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:55AM (#540205)

      Contradiction is only seen as a problem by the NORMY SHEEPLE being Led by the Illuminatis. In the real reality, not the one orchestrated by our repilian overlords in cahoots with the aliens that brought them to power in 1947 (that's why they killed Kennedy), contradiction is smart. It means you COVER ALL YOUR BASES. You see if yes is wrong, then no must be right. So as long as you go yes and no, astronauts can land on the moon - but the moon is fake. Make sense?

      Also, 'theories' not theorys. Let us not be ignorant here.

      • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday July 18 2017, @01:25AM

        by isostatic (365) on Tuesday July 18 2017, @01:25AM (#540679) Journal

        Also, 'theories' not theorys. Let us not be ignorant here.

        I'll give you that. The rest of your post is far to advanced for my jet-lag addled brain at this time of day or night

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 17 2017, @06:00AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 17 2017, @06:00AM (#540196) Journal

    If the global or solar system economy grows, entertainment products may become more valuable since they can be instantly copied and beamed to theaters, VR headsets, whatever. More and more people exposed to a single piece of work. But then you might have more fragmentation canceling that effect out. Gone with the Wind remains the highest grossing film adjusted for inflation, but global population has more than tripled from 2.3 billion to about 7.5 billion since it was released.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @09:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @09:02AM (#540229)

    ORLY? I thought the sociopathic types would be pretty happy with a lot fewer people.

    Imagine you're a sociopathic Supreme Emperor of some high-tech world.

    The wants of a single greedy person may be infinite in theory but in practice when bounded by time the number of wants to be fulfilled per second would be a finite and relatively small number. Hence you wouldn't need billions of human slaves to make you happy. People are messy and not 100% predictable so why waste resources and increase your personal risk by keeping so many around?

    Once you have robots and automation doing most of the stuff for you, what you'd need the humans for would be:

    0) Elite bodyguards: cyborgs or armored tech augmented humans. Or AIs if you trust them to be more reliable.
    1) Warriors: private army. You probably wouldn't want too many of these and prefer to be using drones for most warfare.
    2) Entertainment/gene pool: worshippers, sex slaves, breeders, toys to play with or torture etc. You might need millions but I doubt you'd need billions or trillions.
    3) Slavemasters/Priests: those who manipulate or control the entertainment.
    4) Techs: can design, fix and build stuff that the robots and AIs can't, or can't be trusted to without supervision. You wouldn't need that many of these.

    In fact if most stuff is in space stations it's even easier to control there's no need for huge armies. If you control all the communications of all the space stations, you can control and contain most rebellions. At worst case you can just wipe everyone out in a space station or colony and start over. "Colony 151? There is only one colony: Colony 350. Congratulations citizen you have achieved Rapture".

    If you raise your army and bodyguards from a controlled environment and genestock it's easier to ensure loyalty. You can also do regular loyalty tests as some dictators did. e.g. have a different groups randomly going around waking people up in the middle of the night and say "Hey we're going to start a rebellion, we'll kill you if you don't join us". One of the people being woken up is the "target under test" while the others will pretend to join with the rebellion. If you fail the test, you'd be lucky/blessed to be allowed to die...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:51AM (#540838)
    A real megalomaniac would kill almost everyone else and monopolize the resources to spread copies of himself throughout the universe.

    Why allow a trillion "inferior" copies of yourself when you can have a trillion machines that can replicate you?

    Of course that might mean torturing yourself in most cases ;).