Habitat Population Control

On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 12:38 PM, panamabob wrote:

> Why would it level off? Better education, more women working which
> leads to less procreation?
>

Yes. The data are overwhelming. No question about it.

> results from AIDs die off of breeding age humans?

This is happening in sub-sahara Africa, but Africa is a low-population
continent in any case.

>
> From: Al Globus
> To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 3:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Habitat Population Control
>
> On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 08:33 AM, Andy Goddard wrote:
>
>> Today human population growth is around 16% per decade, just about the
>> highest ever seen on the planet. I make it at least 540 years before
>> even
>> this rate (which is clearly unsustainable on Earth, and is
>> bottlenecked
>> before the asteroids are available) would result in a population of 18
>> trillion.
>>
>
> Best estimates of Earth's population show it leveling off at 9-10
> billion within a couple of decades. It's not a simple exponential
> curve.
>
> -
> ---------------------
> The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
> space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
> worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
> try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect
> and deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to
> spread
> beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.
>
> Al Globus
> CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
>
> Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
> position of any organization I'm familiar with.
>
The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.