Facebook link to – Jeff Bezos wants manufacturing to move off planet
[ 8/May/22 ]
He is correct, but it is not new – I wrote about it 40 years ago (and I was not the first).
It is simple really – basic thermodynamics.
If we are to leave the Earth’s ecosystems in something approximating the state they were in 100 years ago, and we are to have advanced technology available to all humans, and we are to reduce the long term risk to life on Earth to as low as we can get it, then we need a great deal of manufacturing capacity in near earth orbit, with most of our energy capture being done in space, with thermal losses emitted to deep space, and only high efficiency energy transmitted to earth.
Large scale technology (like high speed tube transport linking all population centers) needs to be manufactured in space, then delivered back to earth.
Large networks of deep space sensors and interdiction capacity need to be manufactured in space, and then distributed.
Large networks of mirrors to allow modification of sunlight reaching the earth by +/- 5%, so that we can maintain temperature and sea levels at current state indefinitely.
Large populations of O’Neill cylinders need to be manufactured, so that things that are too dangerous to try on Earth can be safely experimented with, as well as allowing those who wish to, to travel to distant places.
In the first instance, mass for all of this needs to come from the moon, where small gravity well and lack of atmosphere make acceleration to orbital velocity possible with ground based linear motors (no reaction mass required).
This is all relatively simple with lunar based (largely automated) remote manufacturing systems, creating the systems to send mass back into Earth orbit.
Without such systems, we must inevitably, face the same fate as the Dinosaurs.
The biggest issue is getting people to see past the current myopic focus on competition, to see that every level of complexity is actually founded upon, and maintained by, new levels of cooperation; and that gets deeply complex as at every level cooperation requires evolving ecosystems of cheat detection and mitigation systems to survive.
We are the most cooperative species on the planet, and we can certainly compete if we are forced to.
Evolution is vastly and deeply more complex than the simple notions of competition and “nature red in tooth and claw”.
Any level of competition that is not firmly built on a cooperative base, necessarily self destructs. There is no mathematical nor logical escape from that reality.
We accept the fundamental need for responsibility and cooperation (all levels, all systems), or the human experiment in freedom and creativity necessarily self destructs.
Bipartisan politics is a recipe for destruction.
Reality is deeply more complex and uncertain and diverse than that – always.
Our brains are necessarily biased for simplicity, and we need to overcome those biases and accept complexity where it is evidently present and necessary.
We have much to do, and we all need to do – one conversation at a time.
Ted Howard NZ's Blog 