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

Is it cheaper to obtain raw materials from an asteroid? 100 % recycling should be more efficient, minus the inevitable losses. Raw material which is not required in the Hab immediately can be stored and sold to other Habs which make use of the material.

Selvaraj

From: Darren

Over the years I've heard, read, every kind of discussion in relation to
space habitats and for the most part people seem to assume that habitats are
going to need almost 100% recycling and it seems to me that this is
unreasonable. In order to build a habitat you must have a decent and cost
effective space technology and it won't magically disappear. We can send
robot probes through the solar system now, by the time be have a habitat in
space our abilities will be more advanced.

How about this, a habitat is being built and at the same time a robot ship
or even a manned ship is sent out to a small or not so small asteroid or
comet. A net or bag or perhaps just a motor and the entire rock or the bits
of it that you need are moved to the habitat, it should provide enough raw
material to let the inhabitants be as wasteful as they want to be. If a
habitat had a million people in it and each on used and disposed of 100
kilos a day then they would use up one hundred thousand tonnes a day, Ceres
has a mass of about 8.7 X 10^20 kilograms, at that rate, even if only 1% was
usable you would still have a few million years before you ran out. I have
no doubt that a lot would be recycled and people would not be going through
100 kilos a day but I think that they will not need to worry if they only
manage to get the same level of recycling as we do today.

Of course with enough energy it is possible to break any compound down to
its constituent atoms and they should have lots of energy.

Darren

On 8/6/06 10:29 AM, "Douglas May" wrote:

>> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Robert" wrote:
>>>
>>> this is just a guess, but id hazzard a guess that there is less than
>>> 10 percent recycling in the US. in a space station, a minimum of 90
>>> percent would be required.
>
> For settlements around the earth 90% would probably do, although
> importing ANYTHING from Earth will likely always be expensive. When
> settlements eventually move to the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud and
> beyond, 100% recycling will be necessary since opportunities for
> mining new materials will be unpredictable and unreliable and
> resupply from Earth will be out of the question. I guess those that
> choose to go that far out will even have to consider the implications
> of recycling the valuable organic material in their deceased. Since
> they likely will have been in space for several generations with no
> physical contact with Earthlings, their mores and values will be
> different from ours.
>
> Doug
>
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