The Geopolitics of Space Colonization part 2(feat. Isaac Arthur.
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Date: 2022-07-15
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Comments and reviews: 9
HH
Most of what's said in the video would only apply for habitable planets, which we don't have in our solar system (besides the Earth. If we don't discover FTL, we'll only have barren rocks like Moon and Mars at our disposal. Terraforming is absolutely out of the question - by even the most optimistic estimates it would take thousands of years to make Mars habitable, and I don't think humans will be cooperative enough to sustain this big of a project for so long. Without terraforming, these planets would basically be like Antarctica - a depressive inhospidable wasteland with few scattered stations populated by scientists, except even more useless (exporting resources from a gravitational well would be prohibitibely expensive compared to asteroid mining) and hard to sustain (we'll have to import air. No ideological migration will occur either, because no one will allow laymen into these fragile environments that require professionals to sustain them.
Unless we discover FTL and go for other star systems, space colonization will be limited to Earth's orbit, Moon and asteroid belt. That's it.
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Most of what's said in the video would only apply for habitable planets, which we don't have in our solar system (besides the Earth. If we don't discover FTL, we'll only have barren rocks like Moon and Mars at our disposal. Terraforming is absolutely out of the question - by even the most optimistic estimates it would take thousands of years to make Mars habitable, and I don't think humans will be cooperative enough to sustain this big of a project for so long. Without terraforming, these planets would basically be like Antarctica - a depressive inhospidable wasteland with few scattered stations populated by scientists, except even more useless (exporting resources from a gravitational well would be prohibitibely expensive compared to asteroid mining) and hard to sustain (we'll have to import air. No ideological migration will occur either, because no one will allow laymen into these fragile environments that require professionals to sustain them.
Unless we discover FTL and go for other star systems, space colonization will be limited to Earth's orbit, Moon and asteroid belt. That's it.
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Piece
The idea that asteroid mining will somehow solve economic scarcity is complete nonsense.
As our resource production increases so too will our resource consumption. Scarcity will look different sure, but it will most assuredly still exist.
500 years ago, prior to the colonization of the New World, we had scarcity and today we still have scarcity. Sure, things like food are far less scarce today then they were 500 years ago, but scarcity in general still exists.
Scarcity existed 500 years ago, it exists today and will exist 500 years in the future. To say otherwise is laughable. Sure, the amount of resources in the Solar System _alone_ is massive, but first you have to actually get there and mine it. Resources don't matter if you don't get it out of the ground first. This process will be gradual and the economy will grow at more or less the same pace.
However, scarcity will change. This will primarily be decided by the ratio in which each resource exists. For instance, Rare Earth Metals will probably stop being called Rare Earth Metals, since they won't be so rare anymore.
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The idea that asteroid mining will somehow solve economic scarcity is complete nonsense.
As our resource production increases so too will our resource consumption. Scarcity will look different sure, but it will most assuredly still exist.
500 years ago, prior to the colonization of the New World, we had scarcity and today we still have scarcity. Sure, things like food are far less scarce today then they were 500 years ago, but scarcity in general still exists.
Scarcity existed 500 years ago, it exists today and will exist 500 years in the future. To say otherwise is laughable. Sure, the amount of resources in the Solar System _alone_ is massive, but first you have to actually get there and mine it. Resources don't matter if you don't get it out of the ground first. This process will be gradual and the economy will grow at more or less the same pace.
However, scarcity will change. This will primarily be decided by the ratio in which each resource exists. For instance, Rare Earth Metals will probably stop being called Rare Earth Metals, since they won't be so rare anymore.
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futureshocked
Something you may not be including is that in terms of colonization would be mental health. There will be deep mental health tests even for colonists--no one is going to allow people who don't have a deep ability to control themselves and meditate through the long voyages and initial conditions of staying on Mars which would be underground. You'd have to be impervious to agorophobia for instance, and how many people are legitimately dealing well with that in this pandemic? I doubt 'conservatives' as we know them today would be super-willing to go to Mars since you have to have a LOT of respect for things like OSHA and other regulatory bodies, which current conservatives do not (you can love Ayn Rand all day, no one is gonna allow you to just open a door to the outside environment cause you felt like it.
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Something you may not be including is that in terms of colonization would be mental health. There will be deep mental health tests even for colonists--no one is going to allow people who don't have a deep ability to control themselves and meditate through the long voyages and initial conditions of staying on Mars which would be underground. You'd have to be impervious to agorophobia for instance, and how many people are legitimately dealing well with that in this pandemic? I doubt 'conservatives' as we know them today would be super-willing to go to Mars since you have to have a LOT of respect for things like OSHA and other regulatory bodies, which current conservatives do not (you can love Ayn Rand all day, no one is gonna allow you to just open a door to the outside environment cause you felt like it.
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Paul
Not sure about your assertion that Elon Musk would hand Mars over to the US government. He is South African after all. Having said that, amd supposimg that he can turn Mars into something profitable, then the history of the last 200 years clearly does demonstrate that the US military would take Mars from Musk by force, and the profitable bits would then be gifted by the US government to US based corporations based on donations to whichever party happens to hold power at the time.
Do I doubt that the US will end up in control of Mars? No, I just think that it will be taken militarily after the work is done, rather than Elon Musk handing it over to the US.
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Not sure about your assertion that Elon Musk would hand Mars over to the US government. He is South African after all. Having said that, amd supposimg that he can turn Mars into something profitable, then the history of the last 200 years clearly does demonstrate that the US military would take Mars from Musk by force, and the profitable bits would then be gifted by the US government to US based corporations based on donations to whichever party happens to hold power at the time.
Do I doubt that the US will end up in control of Mars? No, I just think that it will be taken militarily after the work is done, rather than Elon Musk handing it over to the US.
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Gokbay
3: 50 India was not expansionist in its entire history
Annexing the Princely States that did not want to be annexed and all those wars and the current border dispute with Pakistan must be a big misdirection/joke then.
EU is not gonna have a space program
. but they already do tho? ESA, the European Space Agency?
No economic reasons for Romans to conquer Britain
Aside from all the tin? I mean sure, by that time Bronze Age had ended and they were well within the Iron Age/even later but Britain does have good mineral resources (Welsh Coal for Industrial Revolution era is another example.
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3: 50 India was not expansionist in its entire history
Annexing the Princely States that did not want to be annexed and all those wars and the current border dispute with Pakistan must be a big misdirection/joke then.
EU is not gonna have a space program
. but they already do tho? ESA, the European Space Agency?
No economic reasons for Romans to conquer Britain
Aside from all the tin? I mean sure, by that time Bronze Age had ended and they were well within the Iron Age/even later but Britain does have good mineral resources (Welsh Coal for Industrial Revolution era is another example.
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Fozzy
Technology changes, but human nature doesn't and the behavior of masses of people doesn't. That's why societies constantly repeat the same old scripts for thousands of years, like broken automatons. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1: 9
Any human galactic civilization will show the same cycles of democracy, tyranny, monarchy, and aristocracy, and the power of any government will only reach as far as their gunships can travel.
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Technology changes, but human nature doesn't and the behavior of masses of people doesn't. That's why societies constantly repeat the same old scripts for thousands of years, like broken automatons. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1: 9
Any human galactic civilization will show the same cycles of democracy, tyranny, monarchy, and aristocracy, and the power of any government will only reach as far as their gunships can travel.
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ThorsMartell
The colonization of the Americas war ridiculesly lucrative from the start and that's why it happened so fast.
I am not so sure if that applies to space mining. As long as transporting 1kg of matter into earth orbit (not deep space) costs more than purchasing 1kg of gold.
Rockets are just way to inefficient. We need a completely new thrust system we can reach the speed or cost effectiveness where astroid mining makes sense or other solar systems get in range.
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The colonization of the Americas war ridiculesly lucrative from the start and that's why it happened so fast.
I am not so sure if that applies to space mining. As long as transporting 1kg of matter into earth orbit (not deep space) costs more than purchasing 1kg of gold.
Rockets are just way to inefficient. We need a completely new thrust system we can reach the speed or cost effectiveness where astroid mining makes sense or other solar systems get in range.
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Jakub
I think you realy, realy hyped a weight that US had on European politics, enormous influence of US is a sure thing, but see US as a problem solver is very missleading, its rather a problem dealer, US is like a old cars dealer and isurance manager, he would make great speach and sold you old crapy car, and when it starts breaking apart he would be like Oh its seems you can not maintain it alone, lucky you have me and my bonus insurance programe, you know.
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I think you realy, realy hyped a weight that US had on European politics, enormous influence of US is a sure thing, but see US as a problem solver is very missleading, its rather a problem dealer, US is like a old cars dealer and isurance manager, he would make great speach and sold you old crapy car, and when it starts breaking apart he would be like Oh its seems you can not maintain it alone, lucky you have me and my bonus insurance programe, you know.
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Bill
Gun culture on mars to do what exactly? Hunt deer? Defend against native attacks?
No. A gun on a mars colony is a liability that can damage mission critical systems and kill everyone. Martian society will be extremely close knit because there's not much living space and you need everyone working together to survive. Because there's no air there. I'd be astounded if the first Mars colony was not an authoritarian state with command economy.
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Gun culture on mars to do what exactly? Hunt deer? Defend against native attacks?
No. A gun on a mars colony is a liability that can damage mission critical systems and kill everyone. Martian society will be extremely close knit because there's not much living space and you need everyone working together to survive. Because there's no air there. I'd be astounded if the first Mars colony was not an authoritarian state with command economy.
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