Bay 12 Games Forum

I want to derailed a little by pointing that the most efficient of harvesting is as close to the sun as possible. So many sifi writers doesn't place the energy output factories on the Moon, but rather on Mercury. It's closer to the Sun, as small as the Moon which easy to lunch materials on it. And energy transferring using microwave doesn't need to be close to Earth at all, there is almost no energy lost when transmit concentrate beam of electromagnetic waves through empty space.   

About the costs going to Mars, and colonizing, you can read Robert Zubrin's books

The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (1997)

Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization (2000)

We already able to do that with affordable costs even back in 90's. And lift off techs are not just limited to space elevators. There are two stage lunch, flying to upper atmosphere with planes, than lunch the sub-small-shuttle with less fuel costs, or trajectory lunch. There is using ground acceleration rail guns to shoot up cargo. (electromagnetic power, or other wise sling shoot, but human can't take the G force using this method, so early lunching techs neglected its development). Rocketry is simply the most well development tech to use since WWII. Even rocketry can use nuclear power to propel. (repel compressed gas as plasma using strong electromagnetic field generated by nuclear powered generator, already been used in deep space probes), but it's development hit the rock with political issue.

Okay, watched the video and... well... none of it seems particularly interesting (and also none of it has anything to do with enhanced or additional senses, and thus I am disappoint). There's not precision or potential precision for any of it, and I honestly don't see projection technology getting this popular, for a whole bunch of reasons.

And it looks like it would be really expensive for something with minimal benefit. There are some interesting bits, of course, but none of it has anything particularly to do with the tech he's putting forth.

Are you talking about "the sixth sense" as using projection technology, or Augmented Reality? Using projection as display interface is never a major method in AR research. (Which is why the demo is more of a show than real application, and old news, it require too much new hardware) The beauty of using AR in smartphone is that its doesn't need any extra hardware at all. All you have to do the the background service support and software only, and it can profit using commercials or monthly fee. The reason why ambient intelligence works, it that the sensor will determine where you are, and what you are doing.

Example : imagine you are on the street, and want to eat dinner. You can use integrated AR techs to find the price and directly pointed which restaurant sold what food at which price, telling you how to go there as quickly as possible, and even getting opinions with social network from your friends in real time. Or finding the nearby people who also want to eat there and form a temporary party group to buy at discount price. And you just need to download app into your phone. I don't see this won't growing to become a great and new way of interacting with the world (and people), and it's already happening at some level. (Look how many time people already loose their ability to navigate without GPS. And with the new app on smartphone, tweeting on their phone to get opinions, it can do much more than pointing directions). It's going to be more common when smartphone are dominating cellphone market, and the more accurate sensors to pinpoint your location within 1 meter even indoor.

There is a slight delay of my internet connection, and I didn't expect such quick replies on this topic. There are several points I'd like to share.

1. People do always use "CURRENT" data to extrapolate the future. It's like you measure the European population in 1500 of 50 millions and said that the world total population can never exceeded 1 billion (Europe is just about 7% of world land area). You should not limit your imaginations when things are happening in 500 years or more.

2. Earthling like to think 2d only. Why only lived on the "Surface"? You know I already mentioned in the post that when population reach that level, it's highly unlikely people will live like now. You can dig down and lived underground, live in the floating platform, or living in space. Only sky is the limit. If we all lived like medieval villagers or in castles, I don't think our ancestors can imagine what's like living in skyscrapers in modern city.

3. It's actually easy to colonize Mars in my opinion. Since we don't need to bring water, airs, most the raw materials to Mars to build colonies. And the gravity is suitable (to live and growing plants) without too much artificial means. And traveling in space is not like driving car. Most fuels are used when take off. When you are in space, there is no extra fuel needed to go to the Moon or Mars, or even Jupiter. All you need is time. So the first step may not to colonize using giant space cylinders. But simple rockets to the Mars using local materials to build simple colonies. And all the current techs can be easily modified to suit Mars environment. It's much more work and lot of extra materials needed to start up the Moon colonies. And the distance will also force the Mars colonies to self sustain more.

I remember once I asking myself - How many people are there in the future world, like a world in star trek series. And what's the projection of the world population will be in the year of 2500. Using a basic mathematical extrapolation, that with simply 1% of annual population growth rate. (Currently about 1.1%). It will take less than 500 years for the world population growing from 7 billions to 1 trillion, if there is no major event that ends the civilizations.

However it's base on the assumption that everything is perfect, and the technologies in the future will solve the food production problems, and people start moving out of the Earth surface. But if people only stay on the Earth with technologies and industries remained the same as we currently have, then a rough calculation[1] can tell us that the agriculture department can only sustain about 50 billions on Earth (the carrying capacity of Earth under current method). And the world population estimation is about 9 to 11 billions on 2050.

This is a passive view about how the world can not sustain more than certain populations. (ranging from 3 billions to 100 billions). But it's all done on the base that technology will not advanced beyond current capacity. It's clearly not the case. In the beginning of the 20th century before green evolution, people predicted that the world population can not exceeded 3 billions, and we did. And there is no stopping for the development of new techs to produce more food and create more living space. There are numerous imaginations in the sifi world, and even in real world revolution right now to topple the limit. (Like mariculture revolution to create food from the ocean which covers 70% of earth surface).

So What do you think a world in the future that can support 1 trillion people would look like? Will it be a space colonization world that earth import foods from Mars? Or people dig out massive underground space, and making the Earth look like the Caves of Steel, farming microbes to synthesize food? What's your vision of the future?

[1] There are about 15 million kilometer squares of farming land available right not. And 1 km2 can produce about 5,00 to 900 tons of crops annually. And 1 adult need to consume about 200 kg (0.2 tons) of crops annually for the 2,000 Kcal/day basic requirements (everyone is vege, no meat). Put the number in you will get 15,000,000 * (500 ~ 900) / 0.2 = 38 ~ 68 billions, hence an average about 50 billions.

For one of the AR app already working. Checking this out. Only 2 mins

Nearest Tube

It's the demonstration of how compass is using in determine the directions of users to be used in AR. But AR is way more than that. And today's AR are much powerful, like the one below. (Nearest Tube is already 3 years ago)

SmartAR demo

Live demo of SmartAR on smartphone


 

The last major technology needed was photovoltaic cells.  The technology exists today, all of it.

Living in space is really simple when you think about it.  You need a biosphere (plants), structure (steel), energy (solar), artificial gravity (centrifuge) and radiation shielding (sufficient mass of the station).  Once you have that, you have a sustainable system and everything else is just window dressing.

Able and WILLING. Using the train analogy, you cal build rail track even in Rome time, (iron/wood/stone foundation), but without the clear design of steam power transportation car, there is no incentive for people to build them. As in space transportation right now, rocket lunching is quite inefficient and costly without the support of infrastructures, so as of RIGHT NOW, it's not economical. It takes time to build and assemble the technologies of supporting the whole industries. But how long will it take is the question. And are we starting toward that?

I know the civilian space lunching project already started when the space shuttle program got cancelled. They've already trying to dock with the international space station. Right now, it's baby step. One at a time. Since most capitals are not focusing and used in this field. It will greatly increase the time of constructing the infrastructure needed for space colonization.

I think we are derailed enough to create a new thread like "Space Colonization in our life time"