We've been building into the sky (was A monopoly over efficient use of)

I see, you want to cover the Earth (all of it Im guessing?) with some sort of super arcology. There are multiple difficulties inherent in this idea as well, that are likely to take as long to solve (or longer) as habs in space. But, Ill posit that its a viable possibility. But, would you really be willing to live in such a warren as a world spanning arcology would have to be? Consider the population pressures that would result, and what response people might have to them...we have wars and terrorists today that cant get far enough away from those they hate to stem violence, what happens when EVERYONE on Earth knows that they all live in the same big building as everyone else? I just dont think Humans will go for it.

From: hitssquad
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 3:38 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] We've been building into the sky (was Re: A monopoly over efficient use of)

--- In mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com, "Victor Smith" wrote:
> From: hitssquad
> > How would space habitation hold a monopoly over efficient use of materials? If it weren't for the lack of sufficient nitrogen (to use as a buffer gas), 5,974 quintillion tonne Earth might be made to hold quintillions of humans.
> Not unless you're planning to tear it all down and build a Niven Ring or a Dyson Sphere or some such

As I have repeatedly asked: what would stop you from stacking? You don't see the double standard that's always set up here? Space habitats are always allowed to stack, but Earth habitats are never allowed to do the same. This, despite that fact that Earth habitats are already stacked.

> or, perhaps you plan to honeycomb the entire planet down to the core to make room for all those folks

What we do -- and we've been doing it for a long time, now -- is take the compressed materials from the earth, and use them to build hollow habitats up into the sky. Doubling the radius of the Earth this way would multiply the volume of the earth 8-fold to 1.0868e21 cubic meters, or over a thousand cubic meters for each single person of a quintillion. We need to subtract one-eighth of that to account for the remaining core of this new, expanded Earth, though that core would be a bit smaller than the original Earth since some of the materials would have been used to build the new habitation into the sky.