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The Year 2512

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Re: The Year 2512

#71

Post by rpm4321 »

Retric wrote: post #63
rpm4321 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about a five hundred year time line. As I mentioned in my post, there will be massive reductions in the cost to orbit and back. Hell, we are already witnessing the very beginnings of this phenomenon with SpaceX. Certainly in five hundred years time, and possibly just in a few decades, it will make about as much economic sense to import rare materials from orbit as it now does to import them from China.…

There are two ways to look at this the way we do things now or the actual limits. For ideas based on now see: http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm For limits see some quick math, you can probably mine down about 20 miles without getting to fancy in 2512 esp relative to a space elevator. Texas is 20 miles * 268,800 sq miles = 10^16 cubic meters. Platinum has an average rarity ~5 millionth of a gram per kg. a…

It seems like we are having two different arguments. My main point here has been that material scarcity will likely be a non-factor in the future. You seem to be in agreement with that point, but seem dead set against the practicality of space mining.

Throughout my comments I've maintained that molecular assemblers/disassemblers (and possibly VR) should drastically lessen the amount of materials we consume. I'm simply saying that if we do run into scarcity issues, worst case, space mining should be many, many orders of magnitude cheaper within this time span.

Right now the US goes to the expense of floating rare earth elements on freighters from halfway across the globe, simply because we don't want to deal with the pollution, real property rights, safety issues, regulatory issues, and eyesores resulting from US mining operations. With the expected reductions in cost to achieve orbit, in 2112 the asteroid belt could very easily be the new China.

Now you could argue that the same breakthroughs that allow cheaper space mining would allow us to cleanly and efficiently extract resources in greater number from the earth - "molecular mining", if you will. That may be the case, but it's really impossible to predict to that degree of specificity at this point in time. We're probably arguing over what in the future would be the equivalent of going to the Walmart down the block or the Target across town to get a package of batteries. It probably doesn't matter.

Besides, the amount of materials we need really depends on how ambitious humanity wants to get:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain

Re: The Year 2512

#72

Post by stretchwithme »

I sort of think we'll figure out how to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Richard Branson has offered a $25 million prize for it. http://www.virgin.com/subsites/virginearth/ The world uses 85 million barrels a day and its currently $85 a barrel. That's $7.2 billion dollars spent on oil per day. And $2.6 trillion a year.

$25 million is less than 1/100,000 of what we spend on oil per year. If every American chipped in 8 cents, we could double the incentive.

Sounds like a kickstarted project I could get behind.

Re: The Year 2512

#73

Post by schiffern »

Retric wrote: post #63
rpm4321 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about a five hundred year time line. As I mentioned in my post, there will be massive reductions in the cost to orbit and back. Hell, we are already witnessing the very beginnings of this phenomenon with SpaceX. Certainly in five hundred years time, and possibly just in a few decades, it will make about as much economic sense to import rare materials from orbit as it now does to import them from China.…

There are two ways to look at this the way we do things now or the actual limits. For ideas based on now see: http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm For limits see some quick math, you can probably mine down about 20 miles without getting to fancy in 2512 esp relative to a space elevator. Texas is 20 miles * 268,800 sq miles = 10^16 cubic meters. Platinum has an average rarity ~5 millionth of a gram per kg. a…

>PS: It may be a mainstay of sci-fi, but there is little actual evidence that asteroids are going to have particularly high levels of any of the really rare stuff. (other than H3)

Untrue. Iridium is the rarest element in the Earth's crust. The majority of the known deposites come from asteroids.

It's not just Iridium, either. Compare these two charts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elemental_abundances.svg and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SolarSystemAbundances.png

Why are they so different? Basically all the heavy and iron-loving stuff sank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_differentiation

Re: The Year 2512

#74

Post by lsc »

comment 13:

"In the future your major political affiliation will not be the nation state or even the corporation. It will be your IT infrastructure provider IE Apple, Google, Microsoft or their 2512 counterparts."

would be an absolutely /awesome/ sci-fi novel.

Of course, for it to be realistic, consumer needs would have to grow dramatically faster than moore's law. As it is now, it's too easy to start a new consumer IT provider business, the infrastructure is too cheap. I spend rather more compute resources per customer, dramatically more than google, and I've got two thousand customers, me being some nobody kid.

If current trends continue (e.g. consumer demand for compute power trails moore's law by quite a lot) the per-customer cost of providing IT infrastructure will be so low that those providers will not be able to demand much by way of payment, otherwise some kid like me will show up and do it cheaper. If you notice... most of the online consumer infrastructure providers, right now, are not in a position to charge their customers anything at all.

Re: The Year 2512

#75

Post by curiousdannii »

abecedarius wrote: post #2

Seems inconsistent to bring up nanotech, etc., yet keep climate hell as a fixed background. Of course attempted fixes will run into issues, small or catastrophic, but they're bound to exist.

I think climate change is inevitable. Whether from human causes or from the natural climate cycles we must assume that the sea levels will change, even if only temporarily from a historical perspective. Even if the sea levels only rise 1 metre for 5 years, that is still a big refugee problem.

What is worrying is that those most likely to be affected by rising sea levels are in general those least able to cope with it. We must assume that there will be hundreds of millions of refugees, from Bangladesh, from the tiny Pacific Islands, or even from New Orleans and Venice. Will humanity let them die? If not then those of us living in higher elevations must start planning now for how we will accommodate them.

Re: The Year 2512

#76

Post by tjmc »

Great article and discussion. I'll add 2 predictions.

Assuming we've mastered genetic engineering, adding the ability to live and breath underwater will be tempting. This would be the catalyst for significant speciation as an additional 70% of the earth's surface becomes habitable.

As a secondary consequence of this, Europa could become habitable. Vast amounts of water, radiation protection from its icy crust and warmth due to the extreme tidal stresses of Jupiter all combine to make it far more desirable than lifeless, atmosphere deficient rocks like Mars.

Re: The Year 2512

#77

Post by kens »

schiffern wrote: post #73
Retric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two ways to look at this the way we do things now or the actual limits. For ideas based on now see: http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm For limits see some quick math, you can probably mine down about 20 miles without getting to fancy in 2512 esp relative to a space elevator. Texas is 20 miles * 268,800 sq miles = 10^16 cubic meters. Platinum has an average rarity ~5 millionth of a gram per kg. a…

>PS: It may be a mainstay of sci-fi, but there is little actual evidence that asteroids are going to have particularly high levels of any of the really rare stuff. (other than H3) Untrue. Iridium is the rarest element in the Earth's crust. The majority of the known deposites come from asteroids. It's not just Iridium, either. Compare these two charts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elemental_abundances.svg and ht…

I was puzzled by this, since obviously there are elements that are more rare than iridium, so I checked the original data source. They eliminate most radioactive elements which kind of makes sense. I was a bit surprised to learn that polonium and radium are less common in the crust than iridium. They also eliminate noble gases from the list, of which krypton, xenon, and radon turn out to be rarer in the crust than iridium. Also a couple sources have rhenium rarer than iridium.

(I'm not trying to be pedantic and start an argument, but just fill in some information in case anyone else wondered about this data.)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundances_of_the_elements_(dat... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earths...

Re: The Year 2512

#78

Post by teeja »

I'm going with Walter Miller's 'Leibowitz' future. The technology to do much else will be lost as a result of economic disasters and unending upwelling of ignorance. (Cf 2012 election) Global warming and searise and the resulting turmoil will hugely reduce the human population. No money, no interest in industry.

Lots of deserts, lots of monasteries (in cool caves and huge underground 'Topeka' labyrinths). The 10,000-year clock will be found and melted down to make weapons. As always (especially today) the educated will be suspicious and forced into hiding. Resurgence of manual encipherment. Tourism to the mysterious ruins of the past a major industry. All slowly being buried by dirt falling from the sky. -30-

Re: The Year 2512

#79

Post by chacham15 »

This article reminds me of another article about what science fiction writers thought the year 2012 would be like (how we would have burned through all out fossil fuels, etc). Just goes to show how little we can actually predict the future,

Re: The Year 2512

#80

Post by 6ren »

Moore's Law: 2^(500/1.5) = 2e+100 (assuming no limits!)

Adam Smith: division of labour (specialisation) creates wealth. It is limited by the extent of the market. Therefore, economic forces favour larger populations. If you have separate classes of people, forming separate markets, they are smaller and therefore less well served. Hence, the elite are materially far better off by participating in larger markets. Consider: can a million dollars buy you a better smart phone?

Of course, people want to feel superior. The above reasoning can also be applied here: http://partiallyclips.com/2003/09/25/dome-house/

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