How many people can the Solar System support?

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?

-- Neil

I guess you would build a Dyson Sphere, but as the upper limit on the
population it could support, a little Googling around does not show me.
Be an interesting calculation.

Look here for a Dyson Sphe

www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html

I guess we would talking about a Dyson Sphere that uses all the major orbiting
material in the solar system. Of course a real Dyson Sphere is a Spherical Shell
of orbiting spheres or some kind of orbiting thing a ma bob's.

Thomas Robert Malthus: How many people? Forget food etc, what about
dreams. I see more effecting us in this way. Because what I have done
is move on beyond what was being done and have seen peoples reaction.
Also one other thing that I have seen is people ability to decide
almost any pattern necessary to live is a life. This list is
depressing to look at and I will not present it here. But it leaves
questions about actions even where life is more normal.

The time frame Thomas Robert Malthus for saw the trouble has past.
Birth rates have dropped food production has grown. But how much are
are ideas of what we should do bring about "life as we see it should
be lived".

Bob L. Petersen


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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.

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!

If everybody needs a 4x6 burial plot you could calculate when you would run
out of real estate for graveyards.

"Al Jackson" wrote in message
om...
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?

-- Neil

I guess you would build a Dyson Sphere, but as the upper limit on the
population it could support, a little Googling around does not show me.
Be an interesting calculation.

Look here for a Dyson Sphe

www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html

I guess we would talking about a Dyson Sphere that uses all the major
orbiting
material in the solar system. Of course a real Dyson Sphere is a Spherical
Shell
of orbiting spheres or some kind of orbiting thing a ma bob's.


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Al Jackson wrote:
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!

It's pretty much 10^22.
There is plenty of energy from the sun, and lots of left-over elements
once you finish building lots of humans.
This is for a minimal enviroment, with energy-food converters.
If you want to grow food, then you need extra, because there is significant
nitrogen/... tied up in growing stuff.

(Al Jackson) wrote in message ...
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!

The Sun puts out about 4x10^26 watts. This would result in each
person using about 40 kW of sunshine. This sounds like a lot,
considering that the average US citizen consumes something like 2 kW
of electrical power. But if we assume a 30% conversion efficiency in
our habitats, we're down to 12kW available power. How much of that
will be needed for raising/manufacturing food? Or for travel within
the Solar system? I would imagine that these folks will be using a
bit more power than 21st century US citizens.

If phosphorus or calcium becomes a limiting factor, I guess we could
switch to silicon-based bones.

On 17 Aug 2004 21:03:17 GMT, Ian Stirling
wrote:

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.

What assumptions are you making about the amount of material per
person required to provide living space, solar panels etc?

The first thing you run out of is phosphorus.

Hmm... I notice phosphorus has an atomic mass of 31, and aluminium has
an atomic mass of 27. If you took Al and threw alpha particles at it,
could you get substantial yields of P that way?

--
"Sore wa himitsu desu."
To reply by email, remove
the small snack from address.

Russell Wallace wrote:
On 17 Aug 2004 21:03:17 GMT, Ian Stirling
wrote:

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.

What assumptions are you making about the amount of material per
person required to provide living space, solar panels etc?

I'm assuming that the rest of the rocky mass + spare gas from gas giants
that is not used up in making humans (few tons per) is enough with a
sufficiently advanced technology to sustain the population.

The other poster noted that this is some 40Kw per person, and said it wasn't
much.
However, consider that this is say a thousand years in the future.
Trying to extrapolate out current energy consumption from the increase
in firewood use from 950AD-1000AD is going to be about as meaningfull.

10^22 is a bit much IMO, but it's probably an upper limit.

The first thing you run out of is phosphorus.

Hmm... I notice phosphorus has an atomic mass of 31, and aluminium has
an atomic mass of 27. If you took Al and threw alpha particles at it,
could you get substantial yields of P that way?

"Rodney Kelp" wrote in message ...
If everybody needs a 4x6 burial plot you could calculate when you would run
out of real estate for graveyards.

Funny there is a science fiction short story about that, written back in the 50's,
but I can't recall the author or the story title.