From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 02 1999 - 16:40:09 MST
Hal Finney writes:
>> Perhaps most puzzling is the failure to use any significant
>> fraction of the resources at each solar system. Human populations
>> around a star are never more than "billions", and we see nothing
>> like wholesale conversion of asteroids and comets. ...
>
>We see a system where they have habitats in the asteroids and they've
>terraformed a couple of moons, in addition to living on a planet.
>Beyond that they might have had to start taking gas giants apart, which
>would take a long time. It could be that after a few cycles people
>have adopted a fatalistic attitude like Niven and Pournelle's Moties.
>They know that civilization is only going to last a few thousand years,
>and long term projects don't make sense given those constraints.
The accumulation of lots of short term projects colonizing the
asteroids & comets would produce vastly more liveable area than
found by terraforming a few moons. No need to take apart planets.
Yet when they consider meeting in the asteroids rather than at a
planet, that is considered a "nowhere place". This suggests the
asteriods have been hardly touched.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar FAX: 510-643-8614
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 510-643-1884
after 8/99: Assist. Prof. Economics, George Mason Univ.
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