"Assuming we can achieve single-digit millions of people living sustainably in space by 2040..." <-- wow, that starts really BAD. I would be happy with 50 people, but a couple of millions by 2040 is way, way off.
I'm arguing that what SpaceX is doing now in terms of reusable rockets is equivalent to the development work by the Wright brothers from 1902-1907. Just 21 years later (1928) Boeing was mass producing its model 80 which could fly 17 people at a time.
Quote from: IRobot on 03/14/2014 01:18 pm"Assuming we can achieve single-digit millions of people living sustainably in space by 2040..." <-- wow, that starts really BAD. I would be happy with 50 people, but a couple of millions by 2040 is way, way off.Haha I assumed I would have to defend that The way I figure it is the most optimistic interpretation of the way private space is taking off. I'm arguing that what SpaceX is doing now in terms of reusable rockets is equivalent to the development work by the Wright brothers from 1902-1907. Just 21 years later (1928) Boeing was mass producing its model 80 which could fly 17 people at a time. I can't seem to find worldwide figures for the 1930s but here are some tidbits I found in the search: By 1930 Qantas alone (a tiny airline at the time) had carried 10,000 passengers. In 1932 (26 years after the Wrights), 3000 people flew on British Airways alone in one year. 2040 is the same difference in time (26 years) from now.
If SpaceX can reach $1000/kg in the next few years that means a BA330 will only cost $20 million to launch. Given the much larger population I see it as a bit of a stretch, but not by any means impossible.
Eeh... say what...?"Single-digit millions of people living in space by 2040"Erase "millions".Maybe erase the entire sentence/assumption.By 2040 we will not have millions, not even thousands of people living in space.We are lucky to have even some hundred scientists, millionaires, visionaries up there.And "sustainably"? Well, that is even more unlikely...Predicting the size of human population in space for 300 years into the future is... fiction to put it politely.Especially if the starting points and assumptions are so fictional.....But with your chart, I guess your chart is as good as any chart predicting something for 300 years in the future. Fiction at best. And your assumption about 2040. Well... it's only 20+ years till that. From the dawn of space age 60 years ago, our "space population" has gone from 0 all the way up to 6 at the ISS today.So, my prediction here. In 2040 we have a dozen space stations in LEO/GEO... with total population of 200. We have few scientific and permanent moon bases with total population of max. 20 people. And we have done few Mars flyby missions and few Mars orbital missions to Phobos/Deimos. Maybe one mission to some small asteroid on the side. That's about it. Robotic exploration has done much more of course. And telescopic observations revealed even more. But this is the way it goes unless something dramatic happens in society and in technology.And any prediction beyond 2040 is totally useless and serves no any purpose because it would be only guessing and anybody can guess as much as they want.
The way I figure it is the most optimistic interpretation of the way private space is taking off. I'm arguing that what SpaceX is doing now in terms of reusable rockets is equivalent to the development work by the Wright brothers from 1902-1907.
Quote from: mikelepage on 03/14/2014 02:18 pmQuote from: IRobot on 03/14/2014 01:18 pm"Assuming we can achieve single-digit millions of people living sustainably in space by 2040..." <-- wow, that starts really BAD. I would be happy with 50 people, but a couple of millions by 2040 is way, way off.Haha I assumed I would have to defend that The way I figure it is the most optimistic interpretation of the way private space is taking off. I'm arguing that what SpaceX is doing now in terms of reusable rockets is equivalent to the development work by the Wright brothers from 1902-1907. Just 21 years later (1928) Boeing was mass producing its model 80 which could fly 17 people at a time. I can't seem to find worldwide figures for the 1930s but here are some tidbits I found in the search: By 1930 Qantas alone (a tiny airline at the time) had carried 10,000 passengers. In 1932 (26 years after the Wrights), 3000 people flew on British Airways alone in one year. 2040 is the same difference in time (26 years) from now. SpaceX is not the starting point. Of course if you calculate growth from zero, it seems a lot, but SpaceX is not equivalent to the start of flight.Quote from: mikelepage on 03/14/2014 02:18 pmIf SpaceX can reach $1000/kg in the next few years that means a BA330 will only cost $20 million to launch. Given the much larger population I see it as a bit of a stretch, but not by any means impossible.Zenit already achieves a similar value. Do you see more than 6 people in space right now?
Quote from: mikelepage on 03/14/2014 02:18 pm I'm arguing that what SpaceX is doing now in terms of reusable rockets is equivalent to the development work by the Wright brothers from 1902-1907. Just 21 years later (1928) Boeing was mass producing its model 80 which could fly 17 people at a time.This example just does not apply here.Air travel is not space travel. It isn't really.Space travel has far more technical obstacles and challenges (and costs) than air travel had to overcome during its first years.Air travel was basically possible once you managed to get airborne somehow. And every layman could then build their machineries in their barns and test fly them.Space travel is not that simple. You just don't build heatshields and life support systems in your barn. Or store hypergolics at your garage.We also live in safety society today. Those body count numbers of early aviation just are not accetable in today's world. Never. So that adds safety costs, redundancies, escape systems, certifications, bureaucracy etc etc etc etc.That's why there is no any kind of analogy between early aviation and private space travel.
Im curious what event you see in the next 50 years that will result in the loss of 3 billion people over a 50 year timeframe?
I guess it's also part of why I think the migration to space would take place so fast. In most migrations, the majority of people are not saying "I want to go there", they are say "I don't want to be here."
I really think this is underselling the difficulties the early aviators faced. Aside from the fact that none of the people involved could be called "laymen", everyone forgets that people like Sir George Cayley were developing the theory of heavier-than-air flight for a century before the Wrights. IIRC Even the Wright patent wasn't for the glider - it was for the wind tunnel. They were conceptually treading new ground, but they stood on the shoulders of those that went before....
I think if SpaceX nuts out the reusability concept, it will be a game changer - and game changers tend to enable exponential growth of some kind.
I'm arguing that they're the first to design so as to solve those problems in a manner fit for mass production.
Ok,Utilizing current trends in economics, resource management, technological development and politics, I can start to make the following predictions of Solar System population.Assuming current political, technological and economic trends continue for the next 20 years, Off world population will number approximately 25 people, including a single use Mars base, a lunar scientific outpost and a replacement ISS built by commercial vendors....Projected offworld population in 250 years; 100 On the Moon, Mars and scouting NEO asteroid and comets....Projected Offworld population in 500 years; 4.5 billion, Floating colonies in upped Venusian atmosphere, alteration of planetary rotation and atmsophere projected in 1000 years. Mars is terraformed with a northern american rainforest type of worldwide environment. Many asteroids and comets have been combined to provide interplanetary cycler habitats. Resource mining has gotten as far as Neptune while plans are in the works to start harvesting Kupier belt objects and materials. Some Humans have been altered for long term hibernation and will soon be sent of a 500 year journey to another starsystem some 60 plus lightyears away that has been found to have a terrestially similar world....
Quote from: mikelepage on 03/14/2014 02:55 pmI'm arguing that they're the first to design so as to solve those problems in a manner fit for mass production. Pronto rocket launches: 390Delta rocket launches: +300Ariane rocket family: 215That seems mass production.
The reason I have included these bodies is precisely because there's no reason to expect the fundamental energy equation of space travel to change in the next few hundred years (until we master fusion/technology x).
Quote from: JasonAW3 on 03/14/2014 03:47 pmOk,Utilizing current trends in economics, resource management, technological development and politics, I can start to make the following predictions of Solar System population.Assuming current political, technological and economic trends continue for the next 20 years, Off world population will number approximately 25 people, including a single use Mars base, a lunar scientific outpost and a replacement ISS built by commercial vendors....Projected offworld population in 250 years; 100 On the Moon, Mars and scouting NEO asteroid and comets....Projected Offworld population in 500 years; 4.5 billion, Floating colonies in upped Venusian atmosphere, alteration of planetary rotation and atmsophere projected in 1000 years. Mars is terraformed with a northern american rainforest type of worldwide environment. Many asteroids and comets have been combined to provide interplanetary cycler habitats. Resource mining has gotten as far as Neptune while plans are in the works to start harvesting Kupier belt objects and materials. Some Humans have been altered for long term hibernation and will soon be sent of a 500 year journey to another starsystem some 60 plus lightyears away that has been found to have a terrestially similar world....Fair enough - no offence taken. I just wanted to be cheeky and point out that, aside from delaying it 250 years, your exponential curve of off world population increases just as sharply as mine. Your technology curve is probably sharper.Not that I think it's impossible - we've basically gone from one to seven billion in 200 years and have technology they wouldn't have dreamed of. That's what's possible when conditions for exponential growth are there.I'm just more interested in the exponential growth that's possible with the technology we have now.
First off, I'd like to see your numbers happen - expanding human civilization beyond Earth is something I've been supporting and working for for a long time.That said, I think your timeline is way too optimistic. One of the biggest flaws in comparing space transportation systems to air transportation systems is the fact that a transportation system exists to get you from Point A to Point B - and in space, there is no Point B. You have to carry your destination with you - and that does not lead to a large ramp-up of population.Unless there are significant technological advances that significantly reduce travel times throughout the solar system, I think you'll see humanity diffuse, rather than explode, outward over the next couple centuries.
So my version of the JFK goal was that by 2040 we should aim to have 4 million people visit space (including sub-orbital, point to point), and 40,000 living there sustainably, and I still think that is absolutely doable. I just got to thinking - what are two things that America has done really well in the past? mass production and space. If they combine... well. Who's to say you can't put as many habitats in orbit as you can construct houses or put cars on the road?
Tell that to the CEO of GM But seriously, SpaceX are gearing up for making 40 stages in one year. And with room to expand.
Awesome thread.To Jim, the point is the money is out chasing the 'good stuff'. When that runs out there will be plenty of money to find the 'next best thing'. If that is genuinely in space then expect to see big investment.
Assuming we can achieve single-digit millions of people living sustainably in space by 2040
QuoteAssuming we can achieve single-digit millions of people living sustainably in space by 2040If by "living" you mean maintaining one's health for a natural, multi-decade lifespan and successfully reproducing and raising children, then no homo sapien can hope to "live" in space, sustainably or otherwise, at any foreseeable point in the future. The cumulative, year-after-year radiation damage will be debilitating and shorten lifespans by decades. Although the radiation from a couple-year deep space trip is on par with other risky behavior (like smoking), we have no proven solution for long-term, multi-decade space radiation exposure short of burying subjects underground, which isn't exactly living in space. Radiation is even more of an issue for reproduction, but even setting that aside, reproductive experiments using lower lifeforms in LEO are not promising. The resulting embryos are almost always deformed, often fatally.Maybe someday we'll be able to modify our biology or put our consciousnesses into artificial bodies such that we can live out decades and reproduce in various space environments. But there's no clear path scientifically or technologically to that future, and it has nothing to do with rockets, reusability, NASA, SpaceX, etc. For the foreseeable future, the best we can hope for in terms of space colonization is the extent of colonization we see in extreme environments on Earth. No one lives out their lifetime or has children at an Antarctic research station, sea-based drilling rig, or mountaintop. But small groups of researchers, miners, and adventurers may work, live, or vacation in those locales for months to a year or two at a time. And that's the extent of what's foreseeable in space.Anything else is science fiction.
The radiation is bad, I'll give you that - worse than I would have ever believed. But it's nothing 2 metres of regolith can't reduce to levels that are manageable.
Have you never been in a rammed earth house? They're great.
We don't live out our lifespans in a house. Even on Earth, no one spends more than days to a year in a cave or under a couple meters of water or in an arctic habitat or even on a cruise ship. Forget another planet or moon.
And even if we could, that doesn't solve the problem of reproduction outside of a 1g environment.
Our species and every other Earth species is the result of billions of years of adaptation to a 1g, low radiation environment. Absent unpredictable and radical changes in our biology or technology, none of us are capable of living out multi-decade lifespans and successfully reproducing outside that environment, nevertheless millions of us.
Quote from: mikelepage on 03/14/2014 06:05 pmThe radiation is bad, I'll give you that - worse than I would have ever believed. But it's nothing 2 metres of regolith can't reduce to levels that are manageable.You're the one making wild projections about populations at/on the "Sun-Mars Lagrange pointsMars orbits, Near Earth Objects, Sun-Earth Lagrange points, and Earth-Moon Lagrange points". Not me.QuoteHave you never been in a rammed earth house? They're great.We don't live out our lifespans in a house. Even on Earth, no one spends more than days to a year in a cave or under a couple meters of water or in an arctic habitat or even on a cruise ship. Forget another planet or moon. And even if we could, that doesn't solve the problem of reproduction outside of a 1g environment.Our species and every other Earth species is the result of billions of years of adaptation to a 1g, low radiation environment. Absent unpredictable and radical changes in our biology or technology, none of us are capable of living out multi-decade lifespans and successfully reproducing outside that environment, nevertheless millions of us.
In Minnesota, we spend nearly the entire winter inside.
Until a few thousand years ago, our ancestors were all hunters and gatherers. By your logic, it would be impossible for them to change their lifestyles to become farmers. But they did.
We don't really know what the gravity requirements are for human reproduction.
Anyway, it's irrelevant for large-scale settlements that are in microgravity anyway, because it's easy to just spin them for apparent gravity. The larger the settlement, the easier it is to have it rotating. And once something is rotating, it keeps rotating until a force is applied to it, so it doesn't require continuing energy input to keep it going...When we colonize space, we can simply set up environments that are suitable for us.
I find, while, to an extent, you do have a point, overall I can't agree with your premiss. It is entirely possible to construct enclosed biospheres that are largely self supporting and are large enough to simulate an outdoors environment.
There is evidence that indicates that sexual conception in lower ravity environments is not only possible, but may, in fact, be medically less stressful on the mother, due to the lower gravity. Conception in microgravity appears to have its' own difficulties, which I will avoid pointing out but should be redally apparent to anyone who understands the issues involved with basic Newtonian physics and docking maneuvers.
Living life nearly entirely inside is not only possible but is done for several months of the year every year in places like Minnesota and Toronto.
I think this is a fascinating thread. I guess it centers on whether we will have cheap access to space.
I doubt if any of the few families who came "Out of Africa" 100,000 years or so ago would have considered the hellish conditions of North Eastern Siberia and Beringia compatible with human life- let alone imagined that less than 20,000 years after this was achieved, the result would be two new humanised continents with a total population approaching one billion!
Also, with multi-century projections, the premise of Idiocracy needs a visit. Consider this your reminder to have your 2.3 plus extras to replace non-fecund siblings, etc.
...O'Neill cylinders, terraforming, and the like are science fiction. Even if they weren't, they're not on the timescale of the OP, by a long shot.Anything is possible given enough time. But the OP was projecting out to the year ~2040AD, not ~204,000AD.
The graph shows a huge dip in earth population. I think the technologies that allow a space population of any significant size will also result in larger portions of earth being considered habitable, and self-sufficient cities and so on. IMO The growth of space colonies will be matched by an even faster growth of earth populations, and these population levels will be sustainable by the nature of the technology. They will just be taking renewable energy like solar power and and exploiting materials that are already pretty much at their highest level of entropy.
You wouldn't want to be in near-Earth space in case of another total war, though. Anything in an economically viable communications or surveillance orbit would be probably in more danger than a random spot on the surface of Earth.
As an environmentalist myself, I don't understand why many of my peers believe that it will be any easier to sustain human populations off-world than it will be on an environmentally-degraded Earth. We'll always have gravity and a magnetosphere, and unless we really screw up, we should be able to maintain a breathable atmosphere for centuries into the future. The worst-case scenario for Earth is still quite a bit more easily habitable than Mars or deep space.We may have shortages of food, water, and materials due to environmental damage, but I don't see how things could get so bad on Earth that it would be easier to secure drinking water or grow food on Mars.
I think most science fiction skips this idea of an era of inner solar-system bound humanity, but I see it as a stage that has to last least a few hundred years. I mean really - there's a lot of useful stuff between here and Jupiter, then almost nothing at all between Jupiter and Saturn, which is twice as far out from the sun.
We have to solve the energy problem. Unlimited economic growth requires unlimited cheap (or almost free) energy.
I don't understand why many of my peers believe that it will be any easier to sustain human populations off-world than it will be on an environmentally-degraded Earth.
Quote from: mikelepage on 03/17/2014 05:14 am I think most science fiction skips this idea of an era of inner solar-system bound humanity, but I see it as a stage that has to last least a few hundred years. I mean really - there's a lot of useful stuff between here and Jupiter, then almost nothing at all between Jupiter and Saturn, which is twice as far out from the sun. There is a Japanese novel series currently under publication (7 of 10 published) where most of human space activity and settlements are in the main belt. (Ogawa Issui's Tenmei no shirube - 天冥の標). It's scale is much larger than the colonization of the main belt, but most of the action is situated in it. I don't know if there are any English translations though.This topic made me think of those novels directly.