MCGRATH%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Jim McGrath") (03/11/86)
From: jon@csvax.caltech.edu Space colonies - even if obtained by dismantling all the rocky bodies of the solar system - can only put off the day of reckoning for so long. The point is that there is a fixed amount of matter to build stuff with, while the population keeps increasing. No matter what the coefficients involved, sooner or later the curves cross. If population increase is exponential, it's sooner. Why limit yourself to the solar system? We are talking about hundreds of years of uninterrupted scientific and technical growth. And if you can cross the solar system frontier, then you may have an unlimited amount of matter to play with (what, the universe is finite? Who says?). Are we to force people to live in space, or force them to control their breeding? I don't care for either alternative but the second seems like less of an imposition. You could always give them a choice. Jim -------