Assuming that spaceflight eventually becomes as common as regular flight today and space colonization becomes relatively trivial (including highly effective radiation shielding), how many people could our solar system support? When would resources become a serious problem? How long would it take before we'd have to seek out other star systems expand into?
For the purpose of discussion let's draw the border of the "solar system" at the orbit of Pluto, even though it extends out further because as things stand now, most objects beyond Pluto's orbit are of little use to us given their distance.
Nothing past the asteroid belt will ever be colonized because the Jovian system and other parts of the giant planets are steeped in deadly cosmic radiation you could never protect against realistically.
>>7991464
>Dat pic
I think it's time to crack out the Cowboy Bebop boxsets again
>>7991475
would they not have a strong enough magnetic field to provide enough protection?
>>7991475
There has to be a way to get around that problem. The solution may be expensive (absurd amounts of power required) but I refuse to believe that there's no solution.
>>7991485
Bebop had some amazing backgrounds. Have another
>>7991488
This is my (admittedly armchair scientist) line of thinking. It's just a matter of having a big enough power source.
>>7991488
Jupiter's magnetosphere traps and accelerates particles creating powerful belts of radiation
Unless some kind of new crazy radiation shielding technology develops it seems impossible for any long term colonization
>>7991464
Pluto is already a Kuiper belt object. If spaceflight is this common everything in this region is accessible as well. It should be also possible to bring some objects from this part of space further in. It just takes time.
>>7991475
A simple solution would be to get everything we need from the Jovian system with automatic probes.
There is no need to colonize any other planet or moon, except for mining purposes.
We'll all be living in Oneil Cylinders in Earth Orbit at Lagrange points.
>>7991657
Anything orbiting earth suffers the same risks of living on earth itself. If we're to be more than a footnote in the history of the universe we've got to diversify in a big way.
We should have 2-3 other bodies in the solar system colonized at minimum and ideally should be working on long-term space travel in the interim so we can get people out and eventually inhabiting other star systems.
>>7991534
That might be a solution to start out with, but we can't just bar ourselves from the part of the solar system forever.
>>7994152
Forever is a long time. 100 years ago only a few people believed in space flight. Now it's nothing special. If we don't kill ourselves we will come up with lot's of clever ideas in the next 100 years.
>>7991464
>how many people could our solar system support?
Depends on quality of life. We don't know much about how the human psyche handles long term exposure to outer space. We might just not be wired for interstellar travel. (Apart from a handful of psychopaths that literally aren't wired to give a fuck.)
>When would resources become a serious problem?
Immediately. You can't afford to be greedy with resources once you leave Earth. Any failure to procure the necessary materials and processing methods will be immediately fatal. On Earth you have an entire biosphere to protect you if things go wrong. Not so in outer space. You don't get to ask ifs ands or buts when you're literally surviving from an artificial bubble. In some sense it's already a problem because we haven't figured out how to use extraplanetary resources at all.
>How long would it take before we'd have to seek out other star systems expand into?
Are we assuming the Earth itself gets systematically dismantled to support extra matter for human bodies? Because if we aren't strip-mining the Earth, we're not liable to run out of resources until the sun goes dark. Population growth isn't a linear thing, it's a function of the environment. Your questions sound like a really bad attempt to ask about the carrying capacity of the solar system.
>>7991464
Considering many resources can be taken from passing asteroids and comets, which are way less expensive to mine btw, it's safe to assume the solar system could support an incredibly hige amount of people, around 50 billion with some oversimplified projection. The problem is, in my opinion, the rate of demographic increase compared to technological advance: if technology stops advancing for a while and population numbers grow up we risk adapting unsatisfactory and dangerous solutions which could hinder long term plans and progress
>>7991464
The sun would die before the human race would.
>>7996132
I am not sure what you answer is aiming at, however i was simply stating the obvious fact that if things are made hastily and with poor technology, the colonization of near space could be hindered in the long run: more simply, with bad foundations you risk to build an equally shit house. Theoretically, given time, we could do almost anything, but speaking of cost efficient methods which can work even now, we should be planning some intelligent design for the purpose of venturing into space after the initial steps are made, quick example: spaceships are too costly, an orbital elevator is a much more feasible and convenient project in the long run.
Theoretically trillions if you could efficiently harness the energy of the sun and perfect space stations. The planets and moons probably aren't particularly habitable. Mercury, Venus, and the Gas Giants are off-limits for anything other than mining. Mars and the moons are dependent on various technological factors.
>>7991475
What a stupid thing to say. How about we figure out how to manipulate our genetics to the point where that radiation is not a problem or we figure out technologies that can protect us from said radiation?
>NO, IT CAN'T BE DONE THE SEAS ARE TOO DANGEROUS t. old fuck @1400's
>>7996214
The best solution would be habitat modules in low earth orbit, like Hoppenheimer and O'neill already theorized decades ago, terraforming is not really a suitable option
>>7996233
>terraforming is not really a suitable option
Not in the short term, no, but in the long term I think it's plenty viable. It would be a multi-generational effort but at the end of the day it's just another engineering problem... it's simply at a larger scale than anything we've worked with prior.
In the specific case of terraforming mars IMO the most difficult hurdle would be producing enough atmosphere thickening gasses to make a difference. If that can be achieved, the remainder is mostly just bioengineering and chain effects.
>>7996517
>terraforming mars IMO the most difficult hurdle would be producing enough atmosphere thickening gasses
That sounds easy compared to these two:
How do we give it a magnetosphere or otherwise block radiation?
And what about sunlight? Mars is about 1.5AU from the sun. That means it gets less than half the sunlight per square meter.
>>7996563
The infamous greenhouse effect will warm up Mars. An atmosphere also reduces cosmic radiation.
hey, sorry to break it to you guys, but we still got another couple hundred years of development before we can do the space thing proper.
i know you guys are disappointed, but thems the breaks.
maybe when we all have long grey beards and a few marbles rolling around upstairs we MIGHT see a long term mission to mars.
>>7991464
Well Dyson spheres are a limit, for one
>>7996217
>we will figure out how to manipulate our genetics to the point where that radiation is not a problem
>>What a stupid thing to say
It depends a lot on how far you're willing to remodel the Solar System.
The average human requires about 2250 calories to support themselves a day, so with the Sun outputting around 3.3 * 10^31 joules in the same length of time we get a hard limit for the number of humans of around 3.5 * 10^24, or three and a half septillion people.
>>7996214
Venus and the gas giants are perfectly habitable. People will live in floating cities. Really fucking huge zeppelins basically.
>>7996844
You could even go higher than that. The planets are all warm, plenty of geothermal energy to access.
And radioactive decay. Plenty of bodies also have hydrocarbons to burn.
>>7996871
Not to mention we could discover nuclear fusion and create enormous power reactors.
And the moment we can sufficiently harness anti matter it's all game anyway
>>7996866
>3600+ Rem exposure daily around jupiter
>the gas giants are perfectly habitable
>>7996881
Artificial magnetic fields
>>7996892
Make warp drives and transporters and holodecks while you're at it
>>7996895
We can create magnetic fields. We just need to make them strong enough
>>7991475
>steeped in deadly cosmic radiation
Do you have to describe it in ridiculous pseudoscience terms, like you're writing for a comic book? If you can't describe the problem without resorting to confused technobabble, you're certainly not qualified to comment on how hard it would be to deal with.
Jupiter has a bigger magnetic field than Earth, so it has bigger Van Allen belts that trap a larger number of energetic ions. That's pretty much it.
If you're living in space long term, you want enough shielding to reduce cosmic rays to negligible levels anyway, and the particles in radiation belts are easier to shield against than cosmic rays.
For instance, if Earth was in the worst of Jupiter's radiation belt, we wouldn't really be bothered by it, because of this thick atmosphere we have. And it's not the literal "thickness" of distance from the Earth surface to the near vacuum of space, it's mostly the mass of material per unit area in a column from the surface to space (although the specific elements making up that mass also matter for various reasons). A few meters of water or dirt would do the same trick.
Another thing is that in the long run, there are terraforming-scale things we can do. Radiation belts can be cleaned up. Saturn, for instance, doesn't have much of a radiation belt because it has rings and other junk for the particles to run into.
>>7996915
>i read a wikipedia article now im an expert
fuck off
>>7996923
Holy shit, man. You complain about that post, but you're okay with "steeped in deadly cosmic radiation"?
I'm not claiming to be an expert, I'm just dealing with this on a level above comic-book pseudoscience.
>>7996881
He was talking about living in the gas giants, with hot-air balloons (presumably fusion-heated). The radiation in belts around gas giants doesn't penetrate deep into the atmospheres of gas giants.
>>7996866
You're not going to get a floating city in a gas giant. The only thing that would float in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere is hotter hydrogen, and you're going to have better things to do with your power than heat up a big balloon.
That's not to say you can't get something persistent down there. You would want to set up an orbital ring and dangle your facilities down from it. This is also a reasonable way to harvest all the hydrogen and helium trapped in their immense gravity wells.
>>7996972
I dunno why we'd want to live one Jupiter anyway.
>>7996972
>you're going to have better things to do with your power than heat up a big balloon.
Not really. From a fusion or fission power generator, the air of the balloon would still be cool enough to use as the heat sink of your electrical generator, so you'd basically be using waste heat.
>You would want to set up an orbital ring and dangle your facilities down from it. This is also a reasonable way to harvest all the hydrogen and helium trapped in their immense gravity wells.
Seriously, a hot air balloon is beyond your imagining, but a space elevator is perfectly practical in your head?
>>7996981
Where'd the rest of my post go.
I wanted to say we should burn up Jupiter for Nucleae fusion to provide more energy for terraforming and poppelling us further into space
>>7996981
To give Han a place to hide from the Empire.
>>7996994
It'd take a long-ass time to burn Jupiter up but if we somehow managed to do it, it'd be an eventual death sentence for the inner planets (not just Earth since Mars may be colonized by that point). Jupiter has been cleaning house and been keeping the inner solar system relatively clean and safe.
>>7997006
If we can burn up Jupiter I'm sure we can burn up everything
>>7996981
Jupiter isn't a good one because it's gravity is too high, but floating in Saturn's atmosphere (like Venus) would give you approximately 1g of real gravity. Neptune and Uranus are also pretty close to Earth gravity.
Without building new planets, these are the only places in the solar system to get Earthlike real gravity, and while Venus offers about the same area as Earth, Saturn offers about 80 times as much area.
If we solved light hydrogen fusion power, Saturn could comfortably house many trillions of people in floating cities, built with material from its rich moons and rings.
>>7996994
How the fuck do you purpose we burn that much helium and hydrogen
>>7996988
Hot-air balloons here on Earth that lift little more than a wicker basket are already huge and unwieldy. I can't begin to image the scale of the one needed to support facilities to get into and out of a gravity well as deep as a gas giant's, as well as power facilities big enough to keep it airborne.
>space elevator
Orbital ring. I'm fully aware a space elevator would be impossible in a gravity well as deep as that.
>>7997035
Just like the sun does. We'd essentially have a second sun
>>7996994
>strike match
>drop from orbit above jupiter
>use resulting explosion to reach light speed
>ГГГГ
>profit
