Earth: Rock City (was Carrying capacity of the solar system)

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Joe Strout wrote:
> the solar system as a whole can support many orders of magnitude more than just the Earth

Maybe not, given that Earth accounts for almost half the free rocky mass in the solar system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size

"The relative masses of the solid bodies of the Solar System. Earth at 48% and Venus at 39% dominate."