Sunday, July 25, 2021

Bezos's Folly

As you may have heard, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos claims that at least one trillion humans could live in space colonies. Here is a brief explanation of his beliefs:

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-limits-of-jeff-bezos-winged-space-utopia-2021-7

I'm not so sure. Such colonies would be relatively small compared to the size of our planet, and - face it - Earth cannot even support 8 billion humans, let alone one trillion.

Here are some relevant facts:

1. Humans are only 0.01% of Earth's biomass:

https://ourworldindata.org/life-on-earth

2. Each of us consumes 4 pounds of food per day:

https://www.stack.com/a/forget-calories-the-weight-of-your-food-is-what-really-matters/

How much biomass would it take to produce 4 trillion pounds of food per day? And how large would the space colonies need to be to produce all that food PLUS the oxygen and water needed to keep us alive? I'm not certain, but it certainly would dwarf the largest facilities currently existing on the planet. How would they all get into space?

I think Bezos's dreams are folly, and I think he may know this. And if he does, what does that say about his motives and the rationale for his private space program?

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