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[ChairmanPoo]

It's not just a matter of energy, but also of infrastructure

In particular, the IRC argument ran about crops. There was a guy who kept ranting against "gravity wells" and said that food could be grown in "vats" (biorreactors, I assume). We countered that it likely would be more practical to grow it in planets and send it to orbit.


BTW: Notice how not only I answered your troll reply seriously, but did it without any kind of snark. I did this as an exercise in maturity. Try it sometime, it feels good.

[Aqizzar]

That was pretty snarky at the end.

No that wasn't me on IRC, because I have never once logged onto the IRC channel.  Anyway, what's "likely" depends entirely on the technology available.  If you lived on an asteroid with modern technology, you'd grow your there, because it be a lot easier, faster, and cheaper than growing it on Earth and shipping it.

[Neruz]

It's not just a matter of energy, but also of infrastructure

In particular, the IRC argument ran about crops. There was a guy who kept ranting against "gravity wells" and said that food could be grown in "vats" (biorreactors, I assume). We countered that it likely would be more practical to grow it in planets and send it to orbit.


BTW: Notice how not only I answered your troll reply seriously, but did it without any kind of snark. I did this as an exercise in maturity. Try it sometime, it feels good.

If you have some solar farms, it probably is more practical to grow it on planets and fire it into orbit. Once you have that much energy attaining escape velocity is no longer a real issue.

Plus it would be reasonable to assume the civ probably has something similar to a space elevator by that point.

[ChairmanPoo]

That was pretty snarky at the end.

Drats!

Anyway, what's "likely" depends entirely on the technology available.  If you lived on an asteroid with modern technology, you'd grow your there, because it be a lot easier, faster, and cheaper than growing it on Earth and shipping it.

My point was that it was not only a matter of technology, but resources at hand and practicality. For instance, if you were in deep space and/or far away enough from a potentially crop producing planet, it might indeed be more practical to resort to biorreactor grown food/hydroponics. But such a rig requires maintentance, too, which has a cost, and various sorts of resources, which you might or might not be able to get from the neighbouring area. So IMHO, it would be easier to grow it on a planet, and ship it to orbit. Though it would depend on circumstances, of course.

[Beeskee]

There are iron asteroids in our solar system that could be harvested without anyone on Earth noticing. Some of the we've found have been valued at over a trillion dollars, though that is also accounting for the cost of the fuel, and time and resources used in boosting that metal into orbit.

And as far as combat goes, even without FTL weapons which would literally vaporize the planet, if Earth got hit with a spitwad at 99% of the speed of light, it would blow the atmosphere off the planet, boil away the oceans, and liquefy the surface. Nevermind if it was antimatter or neutron-star matter or mini black holes or something. I'm talking about damp paper.

If there are aliens within travel distance of us, we'd better hope they are friendly.

[Neruz]

That was pretty snarky at the end.

Drats!

Anyway, what's "likely" depends entirely on the technology available.  If you lived on an asteroid with modern technology, you'd grow your there, because it be a lot easier, faster, and cheaper than growing it on Earth and shipping it.

My point was that it was not only a matter of technology, but resources at hand and practicality. For instance, if you were in deep space and/or far away enough from a potentially crop producing planet, it might indeed be more practical to resort to biorreactor grown food/hydroponics. But such a rig requires maintentance, too, which has a cost, and various sorts of resources, which you might or might not be able to get from the neighbouring area. So IMHO, it would be easier to grow it on a planet, and ship it to orbit. Though it would depend on circumstances, of course.

Unless you're towing stars around with you, there's no energy in deep space.

[Tarran]

Heh, Finally a use for all those brown dwarfs in the galaxy.

[The Doctor]

Let's make the BIGGEST BROWN DWARF OF ALL


By clumping them together :3

[Tarran]

I highly doubt that that is a good idea.

[Neruz]

Heh, Finally a use for all those brown dwarfs in the galaxy.

Actually brown dwarfs are useless. They're far too cold to be of any use.


Red Dwarfs are where it's at.

[Aqizzar]

Actually brown dwarfs are useless.  Red Dwarfs are where it's at.

Racism!  That's what it is, pure racism.

Let's make the BIGGEST BROWN DWARF OF ALL
By clumping them together :3

I highly doubt that that is a good idea.

It would be spectacular.  That makes it an awesome idea.

[Creaca]

Okay, I keep getting told I have no idea of the number involved, so I'll use some numbers to help clear things up. The milky way is theorized to have anywhere from 200-400 billion stars.

 Of course not all of these stars have planets orbiting, many are far too large to even have the life 'sweet spot' others, like brown dwarves are much too cold. In many cases you'll have a planet in that sweet spot, that just wasn't able to have those first amino acids form. Let's use Neruz's assumption that 1/10,000 stars have a planet that is harboring life, has a gravity field we can live in, and an average temperature we can live in.

 I don't agree with that, but I'll use it for the sake of argument. That's Ten Million planets that can support life. I'll use 2*2 to represent us colonizing more and more as population increases , and then assuming every 'rotation' of that is 5000 years, as in it'll take 5000 years for the planet to reach a population level where large groups migrate to other planets.
2 to the 10th power is 1,024 50,000 years.
2 to the 20th power is 1,048,576 100,000 years.
2 to the 30th power is 1,073,741,824 150,000 years. We'd have run out of planets by now, perhaps colonization of other galaxies is in order?


Certainly there are a few liberties taken here, but the point I'm trying to make is it most certainly would not 'probably take us longer than the lifetime of the universe' to branch out across habitable planets in the galaxy.

Disasters another thing to consider. What do you do as a FTL Civilization when your planet runs out of resources, is on a collision course with a huge asteroid in the near future (Comets, I wouldn't be to worried about, nothing too troublesome about a giant ice cube burning up in the atmosphere.) Frankly, I'd move to a new planet. Not as a single concise group of course.

Black Holes aren't a big worry, you'd have plenty of prior warning before a star collapsed into one, and we can reasonably locate them even with our 'primitive' technology today. Sickness is a good question. I guess I'd have you ask yourself where the field of medicine was at 100 years ago, and to imagine where it will be in  tens of thousands of years.
War is an excellent question, and I'm even less comfortable guessing how it'll be fought in the future than I am guessing the rest of this. Though needless to say any war brutal produces lots of wayward refugees.

[Tarran]

Heh, Finally a use for all those brown dwarfs in the galaxy.

Actually brown dwarfs are useless. They're far too cold to be of any use.

Depends on how far from the dwarf and what type of brown dwarf it is.

[dragnar]

*words*

The main flaw with your argument is this: Growth would not be exponential, or at least not in such a simple way. The limits of lightspeed would slow our possible rate of expansion greatly. we could, at most, colonize a sphere of space growing at the speed of light. We would still run out eventually, but in a much greater span of time than you predict. Not to mention, there is no reason to colonize so quickly. Just because we could reproduce so quickly doesn't mean we will. Migrating due to using up resources makes sense, but once a planet cannot support more population... stop making more. It's a simple solution, that might even come up on earth.(we are estimated to still only be using a fraction of the maximum population earth can support)

[Neruz]

Okay, I keep getting told I have no idea of the number involved, so I'll use some numbers to help clear things up. The milky way is theorized to have anywhere from 200-400 billion planets.

That is an incredibly conservative estimate. We're looking at at least 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, possibly up to 400 billion. Trying to work out exactly how many is pretty much impossible at the moment, but to reach 200 - 400 billion planets, all we would need is every Red Dwarf to have 1 planet orbiting it. That's it. Every single other star in the galaxy could be completely barren of planets.


The Red Dwarf planets btw, are probably mostly sterilized, plenty could support life, but the early years of turbluence in the Red Dwarf and the close proximity required to give sufficient heat would probably have wiped out any organic life, although some hardy bacterium might survive on the cold side of the planet.