Dr Gerard K O’Neill once asked his students the following question: Is the surface of a planet the right place for manufacture?
This question was asked on the premise that the world is so overpopulated that there is a need to look for another habitat for human kind, where life can be supported. The students also proposed to to do what humans have always done when they have used up the possibilities of one geographical location. And that is to move on and in this case, to go up. The students say that “whether we love it or hate it, there is no other choice”.
One of the main reasons why the world population increased at a fast rate is because we discovered oil. This is considered as a magic energy source. You might wonder what is the connection between population and fossil fuel?
In a study done by Giampietro and Pimentel, they found out that 1 kcal of food needs 10 kcal of exosomatic energy. This is specially true for a consumer in the food system in the US. In short, the U.S. food system needs ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. This big difference is feasible because of our access to nonrenewable fossil fuel. And now let us put Andrea Rossi’s e-cat fusion technology in the equation.
Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat Fusion will allow humans to use huge amounts of energy. This could mean that our population growth will increase at a rate faster than it is doing now. This is because the e-cat fusion Device invented by Andrea Rossi will open up many possibilities arising from an abundant source of energy. Industrial farming would increase and food will be available to many. This could encourage population growth in a planet that is running out of space.
While the above theory might make some sense, it’s also true that it doesn’t take into account the rest of the technology breakthroughs that offer potential ways to find new homes on different planets. Perhaps it is again time to watch the Hollywood movie, Star Wars, to imagine the reality of our world.
“Is the surface of a planet the right place for manufacture?” Where else does one manufacture? This is a terrible question as it poorly defines “manufacture”. The economics of resource conversion or manufacturing would be drastically altered if all manufacturing where to “leave the surface of the planet”. At first glance the question posed by Dr Gerard K O’Neill is really an oblique argument against the use of arable surface space for anything other than food production. The alternatives being underground, orbital and intraplanetary. These topics have been explored for decades by speculative fiction (SciFi) writers. The genral consensus is if you think that manufacturing is dehumanizing now then what happens when you make people work in sub-surface caves or live in a harsh environment off-planet? Manufacturing evolved from a beginning in what historians loosely call the industrial revolution but only became global through a revolution in transportation called the shipping container.
For manufacturing to evolve from the surface of the planet several other revolutionary advances in transportation would also be necessary. Rossi’s Ecat will not provide that.
But the biggest question remains who would want to live and work in space or off-planet? While the that idea may be briefly attractive any long term solution would probably require either forced labor and the dehumanizing conditions that accompany that ideal or a class of worker that would receive incredible training and compensation to the point of creating in imbalanced accumulation of wealth.
Rossi’s ecat is not going to solve energy distribution problems evident in the world today. What it may do is reduce the heating expense in the extreme northern and southern lattitudes. Converting from thermal energy to mechanical or electrical would not be practical due to massive conversion inefficiency. Even using a Stirling engine to produce electricity from “heat generators” would require a huge technological infrastructure that will not be available to the peoples of lets say the sub-Sahara or other 3rd world equatorial regions where heat is the enemy.
However the real benefit of Rossi’s Ecat may not be the Ecat itself but the sea change in thinking that anything might be possible.
“Rossi’s ecat is not going to solve energy distribution problems evident in the world today.” When LENR technology goes portable, energy distribution problems will be solved (see next post).
The most important technology for human population growth was the Haber process which accounts for 50% of the protein that composes people’s bodies. The e-cat seems like an equally important technology for human population growth. Particularly, since people will be able to generate energy decentralize, so will be able to live off the grid, meaning civilization would be everywhere. Now, only some parts of the Earth are habitable, so severely limits population growth because the 50% of the habitable land has too high of population density which limits population growth.
@Brad Arnold – Your argument makes a lot of sense.