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To: WhiskeyX
"The most easily exploitable non-renewable mineral and energy resources of the Earth have been consumed to build the current state of technologies capable of embarking on the human colonization of extraterrestrial habitats."

All that is "consumed" really continues to exist and can be reconstituted and used again. But yes, there are higher costs that would be more acceptable to smaller production efforts only in the absence of broad monopolies.

As for a sizable enough asteroid destroying all life on earth, the chances are unimaginably remote. Preparations for such an event would also be feasible (shelters, etc.).

Scarcity is artificial--manufactured by monopolies and their regulations against new, domestic competition in each country. Contrary to the proclamations of the debt regime, there is plenty of earth, water and air. Too many products are designed to degrade too quickly and make repairs difficult. Recycling is too often avoided because of costs that would make a global monster of manufacturing less competitive.

A much more distributed economy with open source equipment designs and far fewer regulations against new competition would be more conducive to economic security and avoidance of material waste.

So far, though, some of the more visible efforts for open source equipment designs are aimed at engineers who are not competent as technicians (ongoing intern and administrator failures for lack of technical skills), and plans are to have contemporary local, bosses in government-linked services as owners of community manufacturing efforts (even more likely failures in both skills and management). The current debt regime may not preserve its rule.

The more successful open source equipment collaboration projects, from radios to transportation, are very informal and conducted by many technicians and a few engineering technologists (mostly not licensed professional engineers) without formal leadership.


67 posted on 10/01/2015 1:53:04 PM PDT by familyop (We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of corruption smelled around the planet.)
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To: familyop

“As for a sizable enough asteroid destroying all life on earth, the chances are unimaginably remote. Preparations for such an event would also be feasible (shelters, etc.).”

You missed the point. It isn’t the asteroid which destroys all or most life on Earth that you have to worry about. It is the smaller asteroid which is capable of destroying the present level of global civilization. Once this civilization is destroyed, there will be insufficient time and natural resources to create another such spacefaring civilization before the Extinction Level Events (ELE) occur. Finally, even if the Human cultures stranded upon the Earth managed to survive that long, the Earth’s still thinning atmosphere and the Sun’s expansion to become a red giant star will eventually reduce the Earth to a lifeless or virtually lifeless planet stripped of its hydrosphere, upper lithosphere, and atmosphere, if the Earth survives at all. The sun will eventually expand to vaporize and consume Mercury and Venus. The Earth may or may not escape the same fate, but would be in the outer edges of the Sun’s atmosphere even though its orbit has expanded outwards to the vicinity of where Mars is today.

These smaller asteroids impact the Earth less than about 500,000 years on average. Smaller asteroids capable of major disruptions of the global civilization occur about 100,000 or more years on average. The Earth can expect one of these civilization shattering impact events to occur anytime within the next few thousands of years or tomorrow.

Note, if Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had impacted the Earth instead of Jupiter, our present civilization would already have been burned off of the face of the Earth along with all surface plants.


88 posted on 10/02/2015 6:54:51 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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