Ian Stirling wrote in message ...
Al Jackson wrote:
Lets start this as a new thread.

Gactimus wrote:
How many people can the earth support?

A related question: How does this compare to the number of people that
the solar system as a whole can support?

Taking all of the rocky bodies (venus, earth, ....) and using them
along with hydrogen/... from the gas giants (not the cores) then
the total number is somewhere around 10^22.

The first thing you run out of is phosphorus.

It may be possible to artificially create more phosphorus, and mining the
gas giants completely may get you another magnitude or two.

If you want to live on naturally grown food, knock one or two orders of
magnitude off this number.

Nice start.

So somebody want to take a crack at the physics?*, given the mass of
the solar system and the energy output of the Sun, what is the upper
limit of a human population on a 'Dyson Shell' Solar System-wise?
ize?

* Factoring in the bio-physics too!