How to get to 10 trillion people in this solar system?

There's a simpler explanation for declining birth rates: Parts of
pregnancy are a real drag, childbirth is excruciatingly painful, and
children are time consuming and expensive (although unbelievably
wonderful). This, combined with practical access to birth control, means
women only have a few children, on average. There is no reason to expect
any of this will change with space colonization, so generating enough
population growth to fill the solar system (much less the galaxy) with
humanity may be difficult.

I notice that not a single woman on this list has responded by saying she
would be inclined to increase the number of children she would have if she
lived in a space colony.

At 12:02 PM 5/23/2006, you wrote: