We are outdated... dangerous

Some mathmetician crunched the numbers of human population growth.. and came to the conclusion that some time in early 4000 the earth will be a mass of flesh expanding out at the speed of light. Obvoiusly we have to do something about this..... you might think.. hey we have 2k years, but that's the problem.

We don't have 2k years.. it won't be long before we can't support ourselves here.. we need to branch out.

Humans don't tend to see the big picture.. we become aware at some point early in age and a year seems an awfully long time. By the time we are 20..we are looking forward to 25... at 25 we are worried about 30. Around 30 we start to realize 40 isn't to far away... at 40.. 50 seems right around the corner and at 50 we start throwing hints to the kids that we prefer home care to a nursing home. We tend to think about life in short shifts and never to a point beyond what we think we might concievably live till. This is where we are outdated. The life span of a human in any but third world counties is getting higher and higher, but we aren't thinking about the future. At some point someone will realize that in their lifetime the possibility of a next generation will be zero.. and by then it will be too late.

To carry on with human life we have to take steps that will garuntee it, and the time to start this would be now.. why... because it will take a few life times or more to complete the operation.

My picture would be this...
Orbital communities around planets and moons which have natural resources... contected to workers and gathered resources on the surface by a space elevator. Then ships from the orbital communities will ferry the goods to who needs them in other communities.. also contected to their planet with a space elevator. There would also be Domed communities on planets like the moon and mars.

The theory behind this is A) We need the room and the resources. B) The cost in fuel to ferry resources would be to high if we needed to escape a planet's gravity with them.. hence the elevators and orbital communities.

Next is the transportation method... most on the drawing board require we are already out of the gravitational field of a planet. Some require equipment set up along travel routes(solar,laser) There are some other methods.. I think solar wind was one and another being nuclear...

Some of the above have already been designed.. then can move at vast speeds and low cost provided that the initial investment of the set up is paid. Nuclear powered travel is unfortunetly caught up in red tape because of treaties banning nuclear objects in space. And finaly the space elevator I believe has reached final design but there is no money to build it.

(NOTE: Some of these ships, their method, cost etc.. can be found in a book by Carl Sagan but I forget which title)

The above "plan for survival" will cost in money more then we can possibly fathom, and would require cooperation between the nations and private corporation funding as well, arcross hundereds of years.

Not to mention the slow building of these ships, routes, communities, elevators, surveying trips/mine outfits and cities.

It is quite possible that those here reading this who are 30 or under might live to 100yrs. Those after us to 110..120.. and so on. When will we finaly make the conscious switch to a perspective of life that includes.. a few hundred years? To late to save ourselves... so we are going to have to force the issue and do something now.

i have an idea, why don't we just reduce the human population
who needs to live in space when we have the earth

The chances are that at some time in the future we will, due to medical advances be able to live a lot longer then you have calculated. 25 years ago most people would not have been able to comprehend what we have now and that was just 25 years ago. 25 years from now we might have all kinds of technology to help us easily through this kind of scenario.

Nature has a way of balancing things out. Im sure a global castrophy or wide spread famine and disease will pull the numbers down before it gets too crowded.

Either that or we will all be wiped of the face of the earth by an asteroid. I read on another post that the population growth is slowing. I think one day cost will be a thing of the past.

You guys are scaring me!!!

You sit there and accept the possibility of disease, disater or complete eradication.... yea..yea mother earth will cull our number.. untold amounts of people will die and then it will be cool again... like it's nothing.

These are steps we should take to AVOID the killing of millions ... as humans shouldn't we care that we can save millions and ensure the survival of humanity by spreading out in our solar system.

This only goes to prove my point .. that we do not see or care past our percieved lifetime.

They are doing do something. In fact if you read round some of the other posts in this forum about spaceshipone you'll see that they are making plans of a sort. I do care about the people but sometimes, unlike my belief in spirituality and religions, I loose faith in man and women, which maybe why I sound a bit like I don�t care.

Btw im not sitting im lying down.

By the year 4000, we should be expanding out into the solar system, fingers x.

Originally posted by TPL
By the year 4000, we should be expanding out into the solar system, fingers x.

I bet into OTHER star systems.

[edit on 27-6-2004 by DarkSide]

theres not alot we can do now, we cant go to another planet yet cause of the masive set backs from the columbia disaster. but im sure we'll get there soon with in this century. next stop the moon, and then mars.

There were some problems with that calculation -- one ws that it assumed that women would never have birth control and that the population would simply grow and grow and grow.

Education, better living standards, and industrialization basically reduce the need to have large families and birth control permits families to have only the children they can afford to support.

And not everyone is fertile.

Originally posted by UnusualMe

steps we should take to AVOID the killing of millions ... as humans shouldn't we care that we can save millions and ensure the survival of humanity by spreading out in our solar system.

Sorry, UnusualMe, I'm one of the "head-in-the-sand" brigade. I can only justify this by saying it's an attitude that some people in my agegroup adopt BECAUSE of their age & the felling of helplessness that comes with it. I'm not qualified enough to be part of any relevant research group & therefore can't help with any appropriate study findings.

I do think that the earth's in danger of being over-populated, and have no idea either whether scientific & medical advancements will catch up with or overtake present threats to population growth, such as AIDS & contagious diseases that are on the increase in Third World countries.

Our rate of deforestation's another worry too. And who knows whether we are really running out of necessary resources - & if so, whether alternatives for these will be found in time to save us?

It's not that I don't care - it's just that I can do nothing about it. Therefore I'm glad I was born in the year I was. I'd hate to be an infant now.

Malthus has been dead for almost 200 years....


Unfortunately (for him), technology has outdated his predictions. With increases in population we have seen increases in technology and thus agricultural technology. Much more food, per person, is created in 2004 than was created in 1804.. due to tech that was developed by the 'excess' population.


My guess: population growth people are wrong because every 'excess' amount of population brings someone who, through tech means, be able to increase food production through his discoveries. Just as Malthus couldn't predict the motorized tractor, modern 'zero growth' people aren't incorpoarting future agritech developments into their thinking.

He may be off base... but people are already spouting about shortages in this and that.

Eventualy we'll need to move

How's about we stop the third world from breeding so damn much.

I dont think we should just expect everyone to die, space exploration sounds better...and more fun

We are but a speck in the cosmic scheme, nature and entropy will move our speck in ways we can't fathom. Accept it, forcing order into a chaotic universe is like banging your head against a wall. Maybe we need all these people to stimulate an awareness to our current condition. Think globally and act locally, or just loco.

Or we could just count on a World War every 50-100 years to trim down population.. Look, WWIII is about to start too!

Well guys if we sit here with our heads up our asses
we arent gonna get anywhere if we stay on earth were screwed
if we dont move were gonna be out of the game
so either we wait for a disaster to turn our "civilization"
into a grey smudge on the earths surface or we get
our lazy asses off the couch and build some ships
but human nature is self destructive,we only care about our selves
(we most of us anyway).So most of us are doomed
I wanna get off this rock!!

Getting out into the galaxy is a important step for any race if they want to grow and not die out. The earth wont be here forever our sun will die out even this galaxy wont be a nice place to live in a few billion years when the galaxy andromeda crashes into the milkyway. We have to get out into the universe or we will become extinct.