Tau Ceti: Prime real estate for High Frontiersmen

> One of the aspects of O'Neill's work was that our asteroid belt could
> support a civilization 3,000 times the size of Earth's civilization.

Oh, it could support much more than that. Remember, that number
(3,000) represents a multiple of the *area* of the Earth, not the
population. Now, the Earth's surface is not optimised for human
habitation. There are large bodies of water, huge deserts, and other
less-than-optimal locations. Yes, I know that people live in these
places, but at low population densities.

As I've pointed out before, there is enough room in Texas for the
current world's population, with a little room to spare. Texas has
261,914 mi^2 of land area.

Of course, Texas is also not optimised for human habitation (for
instance, there are water shortages with the population Texas has
now), but space habitats could be so optimized. Now, seeing as the
Earth has a land area of 150,000,000 km^2 (57,500,000 mi^2), about 220
times that of Texas, a number of habitats equal to the land area of
Earth would already be able to support a civilization of 6 billion *
220 people. This is 1,320,000,000,000 (over one and a third TRILLION)
people! The Solar System could support at least 3,000 times that.

> And I think by extrapolation one of the implications of the new Tau
> Ceti knowledge is that this system could support a civilization 10
> times the size of that.

Tau Ceti at 10 times *THAT*? We are taking a GINORMOUS, *HUMONKIOUS*
civilization!!

Xenophile (who needs to actually write that "World of Texans" essay)