I've got it ! This is how we will colonise space !

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

I dunno...The OAP's-brain-in-a-jar-on-a-robot-body idea has the most appeal to me.

They could be encouraged to behave with drouds or tasps, or something.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Okay, Tyrannical, try this. Expand the current population of cockroaches proportionally to what you propose for humans. Picture that.

[Tyrannical]

Okay, Tyrannical, try this. Expand the current population of cockroaches proportionally to what you propose for humans. Picture that.

A building the size of a cubic mile could house 500,000 people giving a family of five one acre of space with a thirty foot roof.
So,at roach levels given the Earth is 196,935,000 square miles, we can habitate up to ten miles underground and a family of five has one acre of space with a thirty foot roof gives a population size of 220 trillion.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And how much heat does that mass of peoples put out? Just body heat, not counting infrastructure.

[mistermack]

The thing is, lots of things would change, if we mastered nuclear fusion.
But all that building work that Tyrannical describes, needs more than energy. That's only one part of the cost. Man-hours is the biggest cost, and that's not getting any cheaper.

Also, fusion is not certain to EVER be practical, for continuous production. They don't seem to be making much progress, if they were, they would be piling the money into it.

But there IS unlimited energy in space. Solar panels. And there is unlimited space in space.
So that's where the future lies for population numbers in the dozens or hundreds of billions.

Gigantic space stations, with as much free energy as you could possibly want.
It's just bad luck that on Earth we have vast supplies of materials, but limited energy, whereas in space, we have unlimited energy, but bugger-all materials.

[Atheist-Lite]

Man doesn't control his destiny and all attempts at channeling the flow of history have led to mass tragedy, even capitalism is now on the verge of killing billions proving itself to be a worthless, null and void as a system of human progress. So these kind of ideas have no real relevance since what evolves will do so. What is forced or made through pure artifice will fail, having too few adaptive iterations before a trial by fire destroys it.

[Audley Strange]

Really we should be working our arses off on designer biotech so we can actually just adapt to various ferocious climates.

[mistermack]

Really we should be working our arses off on designer biotech so we can actually just adapt to various ferocious climates.

There's a problem there though. No matter how you alter an adult, the babies will always be born as ordinary humans. Unless you mess with the genes.
I think we're probably a few thousand years off being able to alter the genetic makeup of humans, in a way that gets the result we want. And then, they wouldn't be humans.

[Blind groper]

There is no need, in the short to medium term, to find space for excess population. Human fertility is in a massive decline. Fifty years ago, it averaged 5.5 children per woman. Today it is 2.5, and by 2050 it will be 2.0. By the year 2100, the world population will be about 10 billion (United Nations estimate) and declining.

However, I still think we will colonise outside planet Earth. It will not be a way to dispose of excess population, though. The colonists will all be descended from the tiny minority that manages to get off Earth.

If and when we learn to prevent aging and death, there will have to be drastic poulation control. Not our worry today, though, with massively dropping world fertility.

[mistermack]

There is no need, in the short to medium term, to find space for excess population. Human fertility is in a massive decline. Fifty years ago, it averaged 5.5 children per woman. Today it is 2.5, and by 2050 it will be 2.0. By the year 2100, the world population will be about 10 billion (United Nations estimate) and declining.

However, I still think we will colonise outside planet Earth. It will not be a way to dispose of excess population, though. The colonists will all be descended from the tiny minority that manages to get off Earth.

If and when we learn to prevent aging and death, there will have to be drastic poulation control. Not our worry today, though, with massively dropping world fertility.

I'm not sure it's sure to happen like that though. The people who are having most kids, have cultures that have a lot of kids. So the newer generations come from families that have lots of kids, and will probably do the same.
For these kids to begin to have smaller families than their parents requires a change in social conditions and values. That might well continue to happen, but it also might not.

The colonists will all be descended from the tiny minority that manages to get off Earth.

Probably, but not if inbreeding is seen as a problem.
They could easily take eggs and sperm from a wide selection of the population, and become surrogates, or even have artificial wombs that nourishes a fertilised egg all the way to birth.

[Blind groper]

The people who are having most kids, have cultures that have a lot of kids. So the newer generations come from families that have lots of kids, and will probably do the same.

The flaw in that argument is the fact that cultures which are having very few kids right now, a couple of generations back had heaps of kids.

In fact, the overall factor that appears cause the minority of cultures to over-breed is poverty. As any culture gains wealth, they reduce fertility. The vast majority of nations today (at least 90%) have growing economies. This leads to reduced poverty and hence fertility.

The United Nations do not make predictions based on nonsense. They have the world's best demographers studying the situation in minute detail. Those demographers predict a continued decline in fertility, and a maximum of 10 billion, with an overall decline afterwards. Since they are far more knowledgeable than me, I am inclined to accept that they know what they are talking about.

[mistermack]

The people who are having most kids, have cultures that have a lot of kids. So the newer generations come from families that have lots of kids, and will probably do the same.

The flaw in that argument is the fact that cultures which are having very few kids right now, a couple of generations back had heaps of kids.

In fact, the overall factor that appears cause the minority of cultures to over-breed is poverty. As any culture gains wealth, they reduce fertility. The vast majority of nations today (at least 90%) have growing economies. This leads to reduced poverty and hence fertility.

The United Nations do not make predictions based on nonsense. They have the world's best demographers studying the situation in minute detail. Those demographers predict a continued decline in fertility, and a maximum of 10 billion, with an overall decline afterwards. Since they are far more knowledgeable than me, I am inclined to accept that they know what they are talking about.

So am I. I wouldn't argue with their best estimate, except to point out that that's all it is.
Trends are often repeated, but that doesn't mean it's bound to happen. I would make the same guess though.
But take countries like the Philippines, there's not much sign there of increasing affluence, and the church has a big influence on the passing of laws. Things like that can affect the future trends.

At the moment, the government are trying to pass a bill to enable the supply of birth control to the poor. The catholic bishops are campaigning against it.
Maybe it'll get through this time. But they have tried before, and the church won.

I'm just saying it's not as predictable as we are tempted to think.
China and India had huge campaigns to reduce the birth rate. It's not inevitable that that sort of thing will be repeated in the future in other parts of the world.

[Blind groper]

Italy has a fertility of 1.4, and is perhaps the most catholic nation on Earth. It is kinda clear that the church's influence on contraception is not working, I am very pleased to say. The Philippines have fertility just above 3, and this needs to come down. But they are nowhere near as bad as a whole bunch of African nations, with over 6. Those very fertile nations are also very poor.

[mistermack]

I suppose that one limiting factor is that the countries with the huge birth rates are those least able to support an exploding population.
So the young find a way to emigrate, and then they come under different influences which tend to reduce family sizes over the years.
Here in the UK, first generation immigrants have big families, but second generation tend to have small ones.
Also the sanctimonious fad for allowing large-scale immigration is going to grind to a halt in the end.
The politicians love it, it produces "growth" which they try to take the credit for to get elected.

But it is dying down somewhat, in many countries. Without the chance of emigration, the countries with big birth rates would be forced to take action in the end, like China and India were.

[Atheist-Lite]

People are far too dumb to colonise space. The money wasted over the past twelve years fighting pointless wars could have built a city up there and put a man on mars. Intelligent people would have used gas to clear the primitive peoples from the oil fields. A cold and maybe even amoral act but so much cheaper and given the destruction of bio-diversity on earth, through over-population, so much more beneficial.