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In a paper published April 16th researchers make the case that we should designate and protect 85% of the solar system as 'protected wilderness'
We make a general argument that, as a matter of fixed policy, development should be limited to one eighth, with the remainder set aside. We argue that adopting a "one-eighth principle" is far less restrictive, overall, than it might seem. One eighth of the iron in the asteroid belt is more than a million times greater than all of the Earth's currently estimated iron ore reserves, and it may well suffice for centuries.
The rational for the limitation is more to do with the nature of human expansion rather than just protecting the environment of the rest of the solar system.
A limit of some sort is necessary because of the problems associated with exponential growth. We note that humans are poor at estimating the pace of such growth and, as a result, the limitations of a resource are hard to recognize before the final three doubling times. These three doublings take utilization successively from an eighth to a quarter, then to a half, and then to the point of exhaustion. Population growth and climate change are instances of unchecked exponential growth. Each places strains upon our available resources, each is a recognized problem that we would like to control, but attempts to do so at this comparatively late stage in their development have not been encouraging.
There are challenges and the authors point out that inaccessible resources, like Jupiter, should be excluded from the calculation and that more research is needed to even determine the amount of resources accessible with accuracy.
Assessing how many tons of potentially extractable resources are awaiting us on those worlds will require a lot more space exploration
Additionally, this is not a limit we are going to hit anytime soon
"Worldwide, the present rate of planetary mission launches is 15 per decade," the authors wrote. "At this rate, even just the nearly 200 worlds of the solar system that gravity has made spherical would take 130 years to visit once."
As an aside, it is not a given that resources in Jupiter are inaccessible with numerous articles on atmospheric mining and extraction approaches and even colonization of Jupiter available.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday May 18 2019, @12:53PM (3 children)
Yes, it's something that will only happen centuries from now. Until that time, we can only watch (to the extent that we can detect it) money enter and exit the solar system, permanently.
If future population growth is low, zero, or negative, there is no resource problem. Also, by the time we are exploiting asteroids, we will have much better reduce/reuse/recycle mentality and technologies. If we believe Bezos, the big reason to do asteroid mining is so that we don't need to do deep mining and other industrial activity on Earth.
Regardless of future expansion, it is a good hedge for if we never achieve consistent interstellar travel. Gives us a steady stream of resources and allows us to study ejected fragments of distant solar systems.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:04PM (2 children)
I understand your view, but in my view if we don't either achieve interstellar travel (need not be fast, and slow has a lot to recommend it) or a system-wide government run by a friendly AI, then we'll soon be extinct. We've already had a few close calls. (That's one of the reasons I believe the multi-world quantum theory. We're in one of the world-lines where those wars didn't happen. There were a couple where avoiding mega-war was rather improbable, figured ahead of time.)
FWIW, I *think* fission power is enough for an ion-jet based space habitat to be mobile. Fusion would be better as fuel is easier to come by, and it would probably produce more power. The two problems (one really) are a stable nearly-closed eco-system and a stable socio-economic system. If we had those we could build something that would work today. It wouldn't be cheap or well-designed, but we could build the Fulton's steamboat model. https://www.thoughtco.com/robert-fulton-steamboat-4075444 [thoughtco.com]
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 19 2019, @07:17PM (1 child)
What is the extinction mechanism? Nukes? Bot armies? Disease? Supernova? I find most of them implausible and overhyped. But if we put people on the Moon, Mars, Titan, etc. we can give them the tools needed to return and repopulate the Earth if SHTF. Or at least hold out in place while Earth gets its act together (even if the whole planet is carpet bombed by nukes, some people will be sufficiently prepped and emerge from bunkers decades later).
For interstellar spacecraft, fusion is probably the way to go.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2013/04/04/rocket-powered-by-nuclear-fusion-could-send-humans-to-mars/ [washington.edu]
Antimatter would also be great... if we can come up with efficient ways of producing and containing it. You can just dump energy from large, efficient power stations on Earth into the process of antimatter creation, and load up spacecraft with what they need. Bonus if you can create a generator that runs on the remaining antimatter and allows you to run a robot factory or something on the target exoplanet.
The generation ship is unnecessary if we can perfect anti-aging and either keep people in stasis or find ways to entertain them for centuries (enter immersive VR worlds backed by next-level computing, storage, and yes, NPCs). Send them one or a few at a time, and you don't need a socio-economic system and damage to the spacecraft affects less people at once. Human production on site with an artificial womb is also an idea. Just spam them towards different habitable exoplanets and hope it works.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday May 19 2019, @11:17PM
It doesn't need to be total extermination, but anything that kills civilization will result in over 90% deaths, because we're far past carrying capacity even with modern tech, and with anything pre-amonia synthesis even is there's no crash below carrying capacity, the carrying capacity has been drastically reduced.
That said, a mega-war would with nukes involved would at best yield a nuclear autumn, so collapse of civilization combined with several years, possibly a decade, of no crops.
As for disease...one lab as publicly announced to have developed a strain of influenza that was readily air transmitted and 100% fatal within ferrets. And ferrets were chosen because their immune system was similar to humans WRT influenza.
Bot armies are a bit unlikely, though they might kill all networked computers. And I don't see us as having any control over a supernova...and the sun is quite unlikely to go that route, so it would need to be a star we were passing too close to. That's one that even interstellar colonies wouldn't necessarily be spared in, but it's also quite unlikely.
You left out "other". It *is* quite difficult to assess the probability, but it should always be included. That one could include things like a mistake in trying to capture an asteroid in orbit, but that's just one that's occurred to me, and there's no reason to think the rest of that category would be similar.
You can claim that civilization would recover, but if you lose two generations I really doubt it, and I have strong doubts even if you don't lose one. Could you mine the ore to build a generator? If you could, you're one of an extremely rare few. If you go back just one century most of humanity was devoted to survival most of the time. I expect that agriculture would survive as an idea, and some people would probably retain some of the skills involved. So it seems to me that after a really major disaster we're starting back slightly before the civilization of Ur of the Chaldees. Not quite, as worked metals will be a bit more available, but also not quite because available energy sources will be fewer. All the easy oil and coal will have been dug.
So it's really important that there be self sustaining colonies in, at minimum, remote parts of the solar system. Roaming interstellar space would be better.
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