Thanks for the piece. I think there’s an unexamined assumption here about the robustness of non-earth settlement. It may be that one can maintain a settlement on another world for a long time, but unless we get insanely lucky, it seems unlikely to me that you live on another planet without sustaining technology at or above our current capabilities. It may also be that in the medium-term these settlements are dependent on Earth for manufacturing resources etc. which reduces their independence.
This isn’t fatal to your thesis (especially in the long-long term), but I think having a high minimum technology threshold does undercut your thesis to some extent.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing current technology would allow self-sufficiency. But part of the case for offworld settlements is that they very strongly incentivise technolology that would.
In the medium term, an offworld colony doesn’t have to be fully independent to afford a decent amount of security. If it can a) outlast some globally local catastrophe (e.g. a nuclear winter or airborne pandemic) and b) get back to Earth once things are safer, it still makes your civilisation more robust.
Thanks for the piece. I think there’s an unexamined assumption here about the robustness of non-earth settlement. It may be that one can maintain a settlement on another world for a long time, but unless we get insanely lucky, it seems unlikely to me that you live on another planet without sustaining technology at or above our current capabilities. It may also be that in the medium-term these settlements are dependent on Earth for manufacturing resources etc. which reduces their independence.
This isn’t fatal to your thesis (especially in the long-long term), but I think having a high minimum technology threshold does undercut your thesis to some extent.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing current technology would allow self-sufficiency. But part of the case for offworld settlements is that they very strongly incentivise technolology that would.
In the medium term, an offworld colony doesn’t have to be fully independent to afford a decent amount of security. If it can a) outlast some globally local catastrophe (e.g. a nuclear winter or airborne pandemic) and b) get back to Earth once things are safer, it still makes your civilisation more robust.