Will we solve the population crisis by a gold rush to the space?
As the global population keeps growing exponentially and the job markets get fucked sideways by automation, there will be mass immigration / gold rush driven by the space mining industry. Ultimately the outer space colonies will have as many people as earth and they will not be allowed to comeback. UN will impose reproduction quotas and Earth will become an ivory tower where only the wealthy live. Thoughts on this scenario?
Lets also remember that we are fucking up earth pretty badly, so it could go the other way around--with the rich bailing on earth for another planet leaving everyone else stuck here to deal.
If they find an identical planet. Terraforming is incredibly hard and costly so shipping out the undesirables and exploiting the f outta some rocky planets is a more likely scenario.
I'm of the view that we will never terraform in a significant way. With genetic engineering and AI and robotics I think we'll have intelligent cyborgs who will be able to live perfectly fine anywhere. That sounds crazy, but it's 10 orders of magnitude easier than terraforming plants.
I thought of writing a story like this once, the plot was exactly the same. Earth basically became an ultra rich suburb of the larger solar system. But it was stupid and cringy so I didn’t write it. As for it happening in real life, who knows? It might or it might not. I’ll be dead so I don’t care.
I don't think there will be a population crisis. Birthrates go down as countries industrialize. The US birthrate is currently around 1.7 per woman, which means that without immigration our population would actually go down.
There is no population crisis and this isn’t halo or mass effect despite how much I wish it was. Population is likely to cap at 9-11 billion. And we could sustain twice that. Birth rates go down tremendously as countries modernize. From an average of 8 kids per couple 500 years ago to 1-2 now I’m the US at least. Same will go for larger nations, less developed nations as they come out of their barbarism.
As for space travel:
There are no outer colonies. No Fujikawa Translight Engine capable of sending us to planets at faster than light speed. No portals that can shoot us across the galaxy in an instant. And even if we could travel at the speed of light, it takes 4.2 years to get to the nearest planet that MIGHT be habitable. Using current technology it would take us just over 6000 years to get there.
Mars is inhospitable and not viable unless we were underground due to their thin atmosphere and higher radiation potential.
We better make good use of this planet. We’re going to need it, all is us.
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