When will there be 1 Billion Smart Robots in Space? & 1 Billion Humans in Space?

“If we had a trillion humans in the solar system, we would have a thousand Einsteins, and a thousand Mozarts. And for all practical purposes, unlimited resources. That's the world I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to live in.” JEFF BEZOS, FOUNDER OF BLUE ORIGIN https://www.clubforfuture.org/

“The itch that led our ancestors to risk everything to travel in small boats across large bodies of water like the Pacific Ocean is related to the drive that will one day lead us to colonize Mars. Its origins lie in a mixture of culture and genetics.” - Dr. Chris Impey, Beyond: Our Future in Space, in the chapter, The Urge to Explore

The reasons to send robots/satellites into space are:

• Curiosity – Information & exploration
• Greed – Making Money

- Communication – in the next 20 years we should have >20,000 satellites in space

- Energy capture

- Matter/material/minerals/ores

(Per Wikipedia there are ~1 Billion Asteroids > 10 meters – how many of them will be mined in 100 years?)

• Fear: Resiliency, Redundancy, War Making
• Replication & Competition – what life does

First 3 items based on the list from Ed Lu.

Here is one company that may help to make this a reality: Relativity Space - The World’s Largest 3D Printer Is Printing Rockets! in 60 days

The World’s Largest 3D Printer Is Printing Rockets! The Printer will be able to manufacture complex parts that would normally have to be welded together and involve countless bolts, nuts, and other fasteners along with many man-hours of labor. And that’s what they plan to do with the Terran 1 Rocket which will only have around 1,000 parts instead of 100,000 that it would take to build a traditional rocket of similar size. The Terran will be a 2 stage liquid methane propelled rocket with a payload capacity of 1,250 kg to LEO at a launch costs of just $10 million! Goal is a 3D Printed Rocket on the moon this decade. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJG41a6xKhI

Per the blog: The 21st Century – The Century of the Billion and Billions. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/21st-century-billions-doug-hohulin/ 

When humans reached a billion people at the beginning of the 1800s, the industrial revolution took off and the world was forever changed. What will the 21st Century look like as billions and even tens of billions of smartphones, IoT devices, AI, AV and robots populate the world?

In Dr. Ian Morris’ book, “Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future,“ it outlines Social Development through 15,000 years of history measuring four traits: 1) energy capture, 2) organization/ urbanization, 3) war-making and 4) information technology.

From Dr. Morris’ book and from other research, I estimate that the earth can support:

·      ~100 Million people using Hunter gather age technology

·      ~1 Billion people using agricultural age technology – taking ~10K years to perfect

·      ~2 Billion people using industrial age technology – taking ~200 years to perfect

·    · X Billion people on the Earth and Y people in Space using information age technology.

What will be the X and Y in 2100 and 2400?

My guess is it may be easier to get 1 Billion robots into space by 2102 than 1 Billion people into space by 2400 but we shall see.

400 years of exponential technology development is a very, very long time but still space is very, very dangerous to humans. Maybe easier to just have robots in space.

Humans may just decide to stay on earth and let the robots have space ?? There is more energy and mass in space than on Earth. All the Sci-Fi movies have robots taking over the Earth but if I was a robot, I would go to the Stars and leave the humans on Earth.

You could make the argument that space is dangerous – especially for humans - but the earth is dangerous without technology. With only Hunter-gatherer age technology, the earth can only support ~100 Million people.   

Per the “Toba catastrophe theory, suggested that a bottleneck of the human population occurred approximately 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000–30,000 individuals when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change.”

In 0 CE, there were ~13 M people in North and South America. In 1500, there were 41M people then dropped to 10 M in 1600. Today there are ~1 Billion people in the Americas. So 400 years to go from 10 M to 1 B may be a good estimate. 1 Billion People in Space in 2400.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1006557/global-population-per-continent-10000bce-2000ce/

In 2019, There were ~23B Arm-based chip shipments - 33% market share. That implies 72B chips in 2019. With projects like Starshot and other micro satellites, we may have a billion working micro satellites and other robots in space by 2102.  Today, we have 2,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

See the report: Becoming an Interplanetary Species: 31 major Milestones - National Space Society (NSS)

https://space.nss.org/nss-roadmap-to-space-settlement-3rd-edition-2018-contents/

"This vision of space settlement embraces both space as a future second home for humanity, in the form of a free, spacefaring civilization, and the resources of space (such as the Sun’s energy for space-based solar power, extra-terrestrial minerals for raw materials, and low-gravity for manufacturing) being used for the benefit of all of us on the Earth. These two elements of the vision are intertwined: development of space products and services for the people of Earth will both require human presence in space and will enable and motivate expansion of our species away from the home planet.

NSS has defined 31 major Milestones, based on our current knowledge and perspective. These can be achieved with incremental advances in current technologies. However, researchers around the world are pushing the frontiers of science in many fields, and at any time breakthroughs may enable us to shatter Barriers and leapfrog Milestones.

Of the Milestones currently identified, some must be reached en route to the settlement of all destinations – the Moon, Mars, asteroids, orbital space settlements, and, eventually, the stars. Specific Milestones then follow for each of these destinations. These Milestones are presented here, with commentary on their current status, along with changes and developments necessary to reach them."

Part I: GENERAL MILESTONES 

Part II. UTILIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CISLUNAR SPACE

Part III. TO THE MOON

Part IV. TO MARS

Part V. ASTEROID MINING AND ORBITAL SPACE SETTLEMENTS  

Part VI. ADDITIONAL EXPANSION AND GREATER SUSTAINABILITY OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION

See this video: Becoming an Interplanetary Species: First Steps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ihdb8-h5Ek&feature=em-uploademail 

Looking at these 7 milestones for humans, it may take 400 years to get to 1 Billion people, we shall see

MILESTONE 1: Dramatically Lower Human Launch Costs to Orbit

MILESTONE 6: Use of Rotational Artificial Gravity for Habitats and Industry

Building rotating structures that can produce artificial gravity of the desired strength.

MILESTONE 9: Technology for Adequate Self-Sufficiency

People leaving Earth with the technology and tools needed to settle, survive and prosper without needing constant resupply of survival essentials from Earth.

MILESTONE 10: Demonstration of Multi-generational Human Survival off the Earth

Human reproduction and raising of children to adulthood over several generations in space.

MILESTONE 11: An Effective Asteroid Defense System

A system capable of detecting and defending against Earth-approaching asteroids or comets built and standing by for a deflection mission on short notice.

MILESTONE 12: In-space Fabrication and Construction of Large Pressurized and Unpressurized Single Piece Structures

Microgravity construction methods developed to fabricate structures that are too large to be launched intact from Earth.

Give these milestones, here is my updated estimate

For Humans in Space, here is the past and on possibility of the future – if we are to get to a billion humans in space by 2400.

1963– 1972 – 12 humans on the moon

2000s - 239 individuals from 19 countries have visited the International Space Station, The space station has been continuously occupied since November 2000, An international crew of six people live and work

2026 - The Artemis program - goal of landing "the first woman and the next man" on the Moon, specifically at the lunar south pole region

2040s – 10 to 100 humans continuously occupying space: the moon, near earth

2080s – 100-500 humans continuously occupying space: the moon, near earth and mars

2100s – 1,000 humans in space

2150s – 10,000 humans in space

2200 – 100,000 humans in space

2250 – 1,000,000 humans in space

2300 – 10,000,000 humans in space

2350 – 100,000,000 humans in space

2400 – 1,000,000,000 humans in space

4002 – 1,000,000,000,000 humans in space *

I would be interested in knowing your thoughts on this estimate.

“The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay. People don't really want change, any change at all. … But we progress, as we must - if we are to go out to the stars.” - Robert Heinlein Double Star

Epilogue - Other Thoughts

See: Charting the High Frontier of Space | Ed Lu - $350B Space Economy and Growing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-KC6yrew1Q

https://b612foundation.org/members/ed-lu/

"7% growth rates means that [Space Economy] will actually overtake the earth’s [economy], that the terrestrial economy in about a hundred years."

Related to Fear & War Making, see the following:

Rivers of blood spilled - The Rulers of Europe: Every Year since 400 B

The Pale Blue Dot - A Compelling Speech by Carl Sagan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb4WhNvLRFw&t=110s

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.”

Side note, I do think Earth and humanity has a privileged position in the Universe. “The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else” where humanity lives - right now.

The Rulers of Europe: Every Year - every year since 400 B https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKqCu6RcdI&feature=youtu.be

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." Dwight D. Eisenhower