Ool wrote:
"Dick Morris" wrote in message ...

To think that population can continue to grow for a very long time, at
anything like the current rate, simply because it has in the past has no
logical basis. The real world doesn't work that way. But it really
would require some sort of technological "deus ex machina" to save us.
What would that be? Surely you don't mean Julian Simon's absurd
proposal for feeding the world (even vast muliples of the present
population) by growing crops in high-rise, 100-story hydroponicums with
artificial lighting powered by breader reactors (fueled by the 3.3 ppb
of uranium in seawater)?

I'd bet my money on SPSs fueling those hydroponica rather than nuclear
reactors--*if* they ever become necessary at all... There's enough
space for them up there--a ring of 260,000km circumference.

You may then aswell grow the crops on orbit and de-orbit using electric
propulsion (mass-driver or similar) and parachutes. Youcan even produce
the material for the parachutes in orbit.


(If space elevators ever become possible we might as well grow all our
food up there in the first place and reforest the whole planet...)

Space elevators are not needed for this at all.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++