See Life II.
Why are "habitable but uninhabited" planets wanted? (See image.) OK. The population question is addressed. Thornton argues that, even if a hundred million people were to emigrate in fifty years by a continuous shuttle service, new births would replace them even faster. Somewhere in James Blish's The Seedling Stars, it is stated that emigration increases the home population.
Lorenzen replies that the value of extrasolar colonies is psychological, the knowledge that there is a frontier, that a fresh start is possible, that a commoner can become his own boss. Wars were fought while the Americas were being settled but mankind is now sick of war and needs something new and bigger than himself.
But need it be on planetary surfaces?
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree that emotional and psychological factors plays a role in why so many want to leave Earth to settle other planets. Most esp. a longing for a new start, to get away from a society where you feel stifled, hemmed in, thwarted, etc. Of course, I also believe there are good sound PRACTICAL reasons why extra-Solar colonization is a good idea.
True, off Earth colonization does not have to always take the form of settling other planets, esp. inside the Solar System. Gerard O'Neill has described how it should be possible to build tubular habitats on any scale you like in his book THE HIGH FRONTIER.
In fact, the fateful Polesotechnic League Council of Hiawatha discussed in Anderson's novel MIRKHEIM was held in an O'Neill habitat a century before the events of MIRKHEIM.
Sean
See note to subsequent post.
Mr. Stirling,
It looks like Blish's statement that emigration somehow increases home population, which I had accepted, was wrong.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The chief political/social/psychological advantage of off Earth colonies would be as a safety valve, a vent which releases pressure and strain on the home planet.
Sean
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