December 2, 2024 • 47 mins
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In this episode of Entropy Rising, Jacob and Lucas dive deep into the fascinating concept of O’Neill Cylinders, exploring how these massive orbital habitats could revolutionize life beyond Earth. They discuss the challenges of constructing these spinning cities in space, from shielding against micrometeoroids and radiation to leveraging asteroids as natural defenses.
The conversation expands to envisioning how O’Neill Cylinders could support entire ecosystems, foster independent orbital economies, and serve as the backbone for humanity’s expansion into the stars. They also tackle thought-provoking questions about governance, trade, and potential conflicts in a future where space habitats outnumber planetary populations.
If you’ve ever wondered what life might be like in a spinning city among the stars—or why humanity might one day choose to live in space rather than on planets—this episode is for you!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jacob (00:00):
Hello and welcome to Entropy Rising, where we talk
(00:02):
about science and futurism.
I'm your host, Jacob, and I'mhere with my co host, Lucas.
Lucas, how are you doing?
I'm doing great, Jake.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
I'm happy to haveyou here today.
Lucas (00:11):
Happy to be here.
Jacob (00:12):
All right.
So let's jump into it today.
I know we are going to befocusing solely on orbital
habitation, specificallyWhat life's going to look
like when we live in earth'sorbit, focusing mostly on
just living around earth,not the solar system as a
whole, or, living on the moon.
Not yet.
Not this episode.
I was really excitedabout this one.
I specifically wantto talk about the idea
(00:33):
of O'Neill cylinders.
Are you familiar withO'Neill cylinders?
I'm not too familiar with them.
Really?
I figured you wouldbe all about them.
So O'Neill cylindersare basically a type of
cylindrical orbital habitat.
And what makes it an O'Neillcylinder versus just, an
orbital habitat is the size.
So O'Neill cylinders aretypically shown as being
(00:57):
around two to four kilometersin radius or in diameter.
And as long as you want themto be, but typically, between
eight and 12 kilometers long.
So they're these very largeorbital habitats, and they give
you a lot of living space, likean absolute ton of living space.
And you can spin them up,and you can have whatever
gravity you want, but youknow, realistically, probably
(01:18):
about one Earth gravity.
Lucas (01:20):
Okay.
So when you're living on a shipthat is an O'Neill Cylinder,
or an orbital habitat thathas an O'Neill Cylinder, Where
are you living on the ship?
Is it on the rings?
Jacob (01:31):
Yeah.
So you're living on the interiorsurface of the cylinder.
Okay.
And when you spin it up, you'regoing to get artificial gravity.
through, it's a fake force,but centrifugal force
is what gives you thesensation of having gravity.
So we can make, smaller,cylindrical habitats.
We don't have to go as bigas an O'Neill cylinder.
And I think obviously our firstgallivance into earth's orbit,
(01:51):
we're probably not going tobe making an O'Neill cylinder,
but there is an advantage tomaking it that big, which is the
larger in diameter you make thiscylinder, the more comfortable
it feels for the inhabitants,because when you have a
smaller rotating cylinder,the smaller the cylinder is.
The faster you have torotate it to get the
same amount of gravity.
Lucas (02:12):
Okay.
Jacob (02:12):
And at a certain point, if it's too small,
there's actually a forceimbalance between what you
feel on your head and whatyou feel on your feet.
I
Lucas (02:19):
see.
Jacob (02:20):
And I don't know if you've ever seen like one
of these videos of people,they're on like a merry go
round and they're throwinga ball back and forth.
And if it's shot from theperspective of the people on
the merry go round, it lookslike to them, you're throwing
the ball straight, but it justmagically veers off to the left.
that's essentially what wouldhappen if you lived on a really
small orbital habitat is anytimeyou try to stand up you would
feel this artificial forcepushing you over to the side.
(02:42):
And it can be reallydisorientating.
So we really need to buildthese things fairly large.
Not crazy.
I think something along thelines of, 150 meters in radius
and you can get up to about,spin it at about 2 RPM and
still have a very comfortablegravity and people aren't
going to feel sick on these.
But bigger is better.
Lucas (03:00):
150 meters.
That's actually smallerthan what I think.
Oh,
Jacob (03:04):
really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not so bad.
You can go smaller.
I think when I was doingthe math, they predicted you
could get as low as maybe 75meters with one earth gravity.
It will be uncomfortable,but a lot of the papers I was
reading predict Most peoplecould adapt to that fairly
well, but, bigger than about150 meters and you can just.
throw your average personon that and they're
(03:25):
just going to feel fine.
Lucas (03:27):
Okay.
Now let's say that we'rethrowing a person on that,
but also, their house andtheir dog and all their
kids right on the cylinder.
And it's only 150 meters.
you're looking up and yousee your neighbors above you.
So you're spitting
Jacob (03:41):
150 meters is probably going to be More along the
lines of what we see forsomething like a space hotel.
This is going to be ourfirst steps into space.
Likely not going to bewhat we see for permanent
space habitation.
Now, when you're talkingabout throwing someone's
family on there, these mightbe, the O'Neill cylinders.
Something that's 2 3kilometers in diameter.
(04:03):
Or kilometers in radius.
Now, the cool thing, thereason I keep mentioning 2
3 kilometers is that's Thatat that point, we can build
that with modern technology.
You can make somethingout of steel that's three
to four kilometers indiameter, spin it fast
enough for one earth gravityand not have a fly apart.
Okay.
Any bigger than that and youreally start getting into
needing something like carbonnanotubes or some fiction
(04:26):
as material with a highertensile strength than steel.
But you do, you areabsolutely right.
even two to four kilometers inradius, you are still going to
be able to look up and see yourneighbor's yard or, see, On the
other side of that cylinder.
Lucas (04:39):
Yeah.
It'll be just like, haveyou ever played halo?
I have played halo.
Yes.
Just like looking upat the halo rings.
Yeah, absolutely.
When but that's technically,that's a ring world, isn't it?
That's not what I know.
And you'll say, yeah,
Jacob (04:52):
yeah.
Halo is a ring world.
And as far as we know,physically impossible to
build, unless you have somesuper material that just,
we don't have a, We can'tconceptualize something like
that, even carbon nanotubesin there, theoretically,
as perfect as you make themwould not be strong enough to
build something like a halo.
You would really need somebeyond our current level of
understanding of physics rightnow to a material strong enough
(05:12):
to build something like a halo.
Lucas (05:14):
Absolutely.
Jacob (05:14):
But you are right.
that is a problem.
If you are living on oneof these habitats, you
could potentially look up.
And see across thehabitat because four
kilometers isn't that far.
You can see four kilometerson a nice sunny day if
you stand on a building.
So there may be our wayswe can mitigate that.
you're going to want anartificial sun and you're
going to want some kindof artificial sky anyways.
(05:35):
Now you will naturally getatmospheric haze and a bluing of
the scattering of the light, butnot to the same extent as Earth.
So what we could potentiallydo is build a smaller cylinder
inside of the larger cylinder,which would be, at the
center of the cylinder you'regoing to have zero gravity.
So maybe you could use thatfor some type of Zero gravity
construction, if there's anymanufacturing techniques that
(05:57):
benefit in zero gravity, ormaybe a control center, storage
for anything, because it's notgoing to be affected by gravity.
And then on the outside of thatcylinder, you could potentially
put screens and simulate a bluesky, and this would also Block
people's view so that, you'renot out in your yard and having
someone on the other side ofthe cylinder look down at you.
Yeah.
Lucas (06:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That could definitely work now.
If the screen was above thosepeople, Creating the blue
sky, but also blocking them.
How did they receivethe artificial light?
Would it be from thelights above them?
Jacob (06:26):
Yeah.
Potentially.
you could just have thescreen represent the
sun and be very bright.
Okay, so a UV light thatalso represents a blue sky.
Yeah, absolutely.
you could 100 percent do that.
theoretically, you couldactually build several layers
of this where maybe the sky isonly 150 meters or so above it.
And there's a screen therethat simulates the sky.
(06:47):
And it makes you feel likeyou're nice out and open.
And with a four or fivekilometer diameter cylinder,
you're not going to, you'regoing to see some curvature,
but it's not gonna be too crazy.
So it might feel likeyou're out on earth.
Lucas (06:57):
That definitely would be more efficient.
Yeah.
But what that makes me wonderis how did the people get on?
If they were that closetogether, you wouldn't
be able to land a shipto drop them off, right?
What do you mean by that?
Like you can't stop thecylinders from moving to
put new passengers on.
Jacob (07:11):
No.
So you would probably have,space docks at the, Poles of
the cylinder, at the caps,basically, where you could
fly into that and you'llhave a zero gravity area.
The only thing you'll reallyhave to do is match the rotation
of the cylinder, but for biggercylinders like this, they're
not rotating all that fast.
So it's not gonna beso hard to land a ship
in the center of these.
Yeah.
Okay.
(07:32):
Which, I think a lot of people,when they imagine an O'Neill
Cylinder, and if you check ourwebsite, the O'Neill Cylinder
I put in the background there,It's like this metal ring,
but because of micro asteroidstrikes and orbital debris,
you're probably going towant some type of shielding
from you and your space.
You want a nice thickwall of something.
Absolutely.
Now process metalcan be expensive.
So one of the ways you could dothis is you could potentially.
(07:54):
Build these orbital habitatsinto an asteroid and then
you have a nice rocky surfacekeeping your habitat space
and it just spins inside ofa Mind out section of that
asteroid and you potentiallyhave an asteroid where the whole
surface of the asteroid is justpolka dotted with all these
Orbital habitats for safety.
Lucas (08:10):
That would be incredible.
it's an interesting conceptto avoid, damaging yourself
and being able to provideprotection for your habitats.
Absolutely.
Jacob (08:17):
Another one is you could have a non spinning outer shell.
of this habitat.
Okay.
Now you could make that outof something like, metal,
steel, or whatever, andthat would absolutely work.
But you could also just pile onleftover debris from a, maybe
if you're bringing asteroidsinto one of the Lagrangian
points of the Earth Moon orbit.
When you're done withthat, there's gonna be a
lot of rubble left over.
(08:38):
Maybe a profitable use of thatextra rubble will be to use it
to surround the orbital habitatsand their non rotating shell,
just to give you a nice thickshell of rock so that if there's
a micrometeorite strike, it'snot going to puncture your
habitat and kill everybody.
Lucas (08:50):
Just making space trash shields.
Jacob (08:52):
Yeah, exactly.
just use some type of adhesive,glue them all together
on the outer side of your
Lucas (08:59):
Elmer's glue out to make such an
advanced habitat.
I don't know.
I feel like that wouldbe a little ghetto.
Yeah,
Jacob (09:08):
but if it works.
it makes use of all thoseleftover debris that would
otherwise just be cloggingup some of your orbit.
Lucas (09:14):
So how would we hold a non orbiting shield that goes
around an orbiting habitat?
Jacob (09:21):
What do you mean?
Non
Lucas (09:22):
orbiting or non spinning?
Sorry.
Jacob (09:24):
Yeah.
you could potentially justhave two cylinder approach.
You've got one cylinderthat spins inside of
an outer cylinder.
Yeah.
Maybe that's connectedthrough a bearing.
Maybe there's magneticfields that hold it there.
some type ofmechanical connection.
Or maybe it's justfree floating.
Maybe not free floating becausethen there's a risk they
could drift into each other.
But I think it would justbe some type of connection
where you have an outerspinning section or an outer
non spinning section and thenan inner spinning section.
Lucas (09:46):
Okay.
like how a globe, itcould be fixed at those
top and bottom points.
Yeah, exactly.
The outside would notspin, but the inside would.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
And do you think that spacedebris would be enough to
make people feel safe to liveon one of those habitats?
Jacob (10:01):
yeah, you could potentially have, tens of
meters of thick, solid stonebetween the outer wall of
your habitat and space.
you can go as crazy as you want.
I could potentially seea group of people who are
extra paranoid, even goingfurther than that, having,
half a kilometer thick.
Stone surrounding their spacehabitat because they're just
that paranoid or maybe it'sa military installation.
(10:23):
I don't know, but
Lucas (10:24):
and they got the paranoia package.
Yes, exactly.
30 feet of solid concrete.
Yeah, you're fine.
Jacob (10:34):
But then has rock outside of
Lucas (10:35):
it.
Yeah, we piled onextra rocks for you.
No, that, that issuper interesting.
So going into, how you'rethinking that they're built,
is there any other challengesthat we would face with
these habitats in space?
Jacob (10:48):
space debris would be a really big one.
that would probably beone of the largest ones.
Radiation would be another hugeissue we're going to have with
these, which also ties backinto, you know, why you would
want to maybe build them into anasteroid that's already there,
or you would want to surroundthem with stone, like really
thick stone, because that wouldalso act as radiation shielding
and just make it safer forpeople in terms of that as well.
Those would be the two largestissues on the safety front.
Lucas (11:10):
Awesome.
So now let's talk alittle bit about what it
would be like, being upthere in those cylinders.
as far as let's say amore permanent residence,
not just tourism.
how do you think lifewould develop on?
a spinning, cylinder type,floating habitat, or just on a
traditional, a large deluxe ISS.
Jacob (11:31):
I think the benefit of the spinning habitat
versus the ISS is gravity.
And another benefit is youcan really make life be
whatever you want it to be.
Do you want to livein a huge city?
If so, you can build thatin one of these cylinders.
You can have the populationdensity of New York.
you can make it aslong as you want.
So you can have more landarea than New York, London,
(11:52):
whatever city you want.
And you can build skyscrapersand it would feel pretty
much like you live ina giant city, right?
You could have cars drivingaround, It could really feel
just like on earth with maybethe only difference being
there's a slight curvatureoff to the sides that
you notice alternatively.
You could make it almostlike a nature preserve.
It could be lush farmlandsand full of trees with maybe
(12:14):
a very low population density.
I could even envisionhabitats where
it's effectively almost likea national park where very
few people live there exceptfor some very wealthy patrons
that maybe agree to abide bycertain regulations to keep the
lands pure and this cylindricalhabitat may only have a handful
of people who live on, lush,huge Country estates and then
(12:36):
it might have a segregated areawhere there's some tourism going
on to help fund the whole thingOr maybe it'll be solely funded
by just really rich peoplewho want to have all of this
nice pristine untouched land
Lucas (12:47):
Okay, what if it was like, like commercialized
turned into something thatcould be used as like a research
facility or you know themanufacturing of Luxury goods.
Absolutely.
You could do that.
Jacob (13:01):
I think likely you would separate out your manufacturing
facilities versus your livingfacilities Because why would
you take up valuable livingreal estate, for manufacturing,
your manufacturing buildingsdon't need to have a view you
could really build like a if youneeded gravity to manufacture
something in space I couldimagine a cylindrical habitat
that has multiple layers to it.
(13:21):
I mean you could do Youknow 50 60 layers that
are 10 meters, You Dick.
Yeah.
And, 0.
5 kilometers.
That's, you're going tohave pretty sufficient
gravity even in the lowestgravity of those layers.
Because as you move toward thecenter of the habitat, gravity
is going to get lower and lower.
So you can't, build these layersall the way to the center.
But maybe you could, maybesome manufacturing techniques
we'll find will workbetter with lower gravity.
Lucas (13:44):
Yeah.
they would definitely be betterfor the manufacturing of,
spaceships and their parts.
that would probably be thestart to how we got something
going because we would needpeople to be living on them.
Assuming that we're notusing robots or AI yet.
Jacob (13:57):
Yeah, I think that's actually the most likely case.
Like what you just said.
I think once we start buildingout our orbital economy, we're
going to start building shipsor we're going to find some
other manufacturing techniquesthat are beneficial or it's
better to do it in low gravityto the point of offsets the
cost of doing it in orbitand shipping it to earth.
And then naturally we'regoing to need people to
live on these habitats.
And you've seen theresearch that's came
(14:19):
back from like the ISS.
People really don't farewell living in zero gravity.
There's all kinds ofmedical issues that causes.
And it's also just not fun.
Everything is a challenge.
Eating is a challenge.
Sleeping is a challenge.
people report they feelstuffy all the time because
the fluid distribution inyour body gets messed up.
So people are going to wantto live in a gravity field
(14:41):
or in artificial gravity.
Even if the manufacturing itselfis happening in zero gravity.
Lucas (14:45):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
the zero gravity just bringsa lot of stress on the
mentally and physically onyourself and your, if you
are bringing your family.
Jacob (14:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I definitely foresee asituation where, you could
imagine there's this zerogravity construction yard
building, maybe ships to gomine the outer solar system,
like what we talked aboutlast week, and they have a,
some type of orbital habitat.
adjacent to this that's spun upto give the workers artificial
gravity whenever they're notworking and stuff like that.
(15:15):
Yeah.
That's actually, that's howI foresee a lot of people
moving from earth to orbit.
Cause I think it's going tobe very expensive to move from
earth into an orbital habitat.
Lucas (15:24):
Yeah, I would think so as well.
maybe in the very beginningit would be cheaper
because they need people.
And you know, I don't wantto be the first guy on the
experimental orbital habitat.
Absolutely.
Jacob (15:37):
That's actually, that you bring that up is a good
point, because I think a lotof people are going to be very
scared of these habitats atfirst, because I think there's
going to be this like pervasivepsyche of what if something
goes wrong, because everyone'sgoing to be frightened of it.
Lucas (15:48):
And then something will go wrong eventually, right?
I
Jacob (15:50):
mean, maybe, but it could be the case that these
habitats are safer than Earth,given all the natural disasters,
earthquakes, and hurricanes.
Yeah.
But even if they're a hundredtimes safer than Earth, I think
people are going to naturally bemore afraid of living on them.
I mean, flying is significantlysafer than driving, but You
very rarely see people whoare afraid of driving, but
I meet all kinds of peoplewho are afraid of flying.
Lucas (16:10):
Yeah, because you feel like if something does
go wrong, there's nothingyou can do to stop it.
It's not in your control at all.
Jacob (16:15):
Yeah, exactly.
So I think that wouldalso be, prevalent in
the psyche of people wholive on these habitats.
And I think you could evensee very harsh punishments for
people who affect these habitatsin any way, shape, or form.
If you're seen as someonetampering with the habitat,
there might be some fairlyharsh punishments for that.
Even if what you're doingis relatively harmless,
but Just to prove a point,we don't take this at all.
Lucas (16:36):
Yeah.
that's how it would need to be.
Cause you are talkingabout the lives of hundreds
of thousands of people.
You
Jacob (16:41):
can potentially hold millions of people
in these habitats, which
Lucas (16:45):
is crazy.
Cause
Jacob (16:45):
like I said, you can make them have land area greater
than New York city, greater thanLondon and population densities,
even greater than those two.
So you could have millions,tens of millions of people
on some of these habitats,and you can really customize
these habitats to be asbig or small as you want.
if you wanted a one familyhome that is, has one earth
gravity, you could potentiallyjust, build the home, put a
(17:07):
tether on the top of it, puta big old counterweight on
the other end of that tetherand spin the whole thing up.
So if you're really rich,maybe that's what you're
going to have your ownprivate, orbital reputation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you can buildthem like rings.
You can really go crazy with it.
really the only thing we haveto be mindful of is the radius.
You can't go toosmall or they're just
really uncomfortable.
Lucas (17:27):
Now, when you sound comfortable, they'd still work.
Jacob (17:29):
they would still
Lucas (17:29):
work.
You could, you would justlistings left or right,
depending on how it's spinning.
Jacob (17:35):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
You would feel verydisorientated if you were on
these, because the sensationto your feet, to your head
would be very different.
Make it give you verybad motion sickness.
Lucas (17:43):
Got it.
So I'd rather be
Jacob (17:44):
dead.
Yeah.
It'd be like a torture chamberif you had a really small one.
. Also, if it's too small,when you go to stand up,
you might just get knockedover by the force imbalance.
Lucas (17:52):
Yeah, you're essentially just a washing
machine at that point.
Yeah, exactly.
Or a dryer.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, who do you thinkis going to be able
to get up there first?
Because I feel like,commercially, especially
with SpaceX and everythingthat they're doing, and
they're having some othercompanies come out and start
developing ships that theyare saying they want to use
(18:12):
for commercial spaceflight.
in the future, do you thinkthat our government would
invest at all into theseorbital habitats or would
it be entirely commercial?
Because I think it mightend up being almost
entirely commercial.
Jacob (18:23):
I think I agree with you., uh, government investing
space travel is how it'salways been done in the past.
look at the ISS, but I doagree with you going forward.
I do believe it willprobably largely
Lucas (18:32):
be commercial.
Yeah.
And now assuming thatwe will still need some
type of government onthese habitats, though.
And, how do you thinkthat would work?
Jacob (18:40):
Yeah.
So I think that in the beginningstages, it's going to be almost
like How you see maritime lawnow where it's really almost
a free for all there's somelarge wide sweeping General
laws for the most part.
It's every man for himself And Ithink every habitat is going to
be allowed to essentially governitself any way it sees fit and
(19:03):
especially When companies arefirst building these habitats,
it's probably just gonna fallunder it's corporate Oversight
of how they want to do it.
My prediction is though, likelythe actual laws governing what
can and can't go on in thesehabitats is going to be based
on whichever country, uh, thecorporation that owns these
habitats is based in, prettymuch like how cruise ships work
(19:24):
now, whatever your port of callis, is the laws that you follow.
I see.
I think that's how we'llprobably see it in the beginning
Lucas (19:29):
stages.
That would make sense, right?
Because the entire thing,I feel like you were
saying earlier, but juststart off as space hotels.
Yes, exactly.
nobody's going to go up there tolive, first of all, it'll just
be, I want to go and see space.
I want to buy ElonMusk's ticket, right?
To fly up there.
Jacob (19:43):
Exactly.
And I mean, there will be peoplewho maybe don't live there,
but in the same way that peoplelive on cruise ships, right?
Sign up to do likea stint of time.
Lucas (19:50):
If you're bartenders and, you're, you're people who bust
on tables, maintain the ship,engineers, things like that.
Yeah, it, it is interesting tothink that it's, it would just
be a giant floating cruise ship.
Yeah, exactly.
Jacob (20:03):
So there are some legislations in place.
the outer space treatyis a famous one, right?
And I, it's not that it'snot worth talking about.
But I'm willing to bet thatthing just falls apart the
minute money gets involved.
it was made as a very idealisticpiece of legislation that was
made when people thought thatthere was no value to space.
It's very easy to have thesenoble and lofty ideals of how
(20:25):
you'll treat a piece of landif it's not worth anything.
Same thing with space.
So my prediction isthat's not going to.
Maybe in the beginning, earlystages, but I don't think
that'll really govern how wedo things very much at all.
But I do think as we get alittle more advanced, we start
building more and more of thesehabitats, more laws are going
to be brought into question.
Because what happens when youhave your first group of people
(20:46):
band together to build one ofthese habitats, and they don't
want to be with any country?
Or what happens when you havethis orbital habitat, maybe
that's based in some countrythat has less regulations,
and they're using it as a wayto commit crimes on countries
that have more regulations,like a tax haven, or maybe
they're, laundering money ordoing all these, financial
frauds against the U.
S.
or something, but they'rebased in another country,
(21:08):
and they're located inspace, or maybe they're
not based in any country.
They declared themselvestheir own unique thing.
Lucas (21:13):
if it was, legal to be able to claim yourself
as just like your own thing,a man of no country, right?
I feel like there would be afew other things that would
have to happen because,doing that nowadays, like
you can't do that, right?
Jacob (21:30):
that's actually a good point.
you could definitely seea situation maybe where
individual habitats operatealmost like a city state.
But a group of habitatsmight have a, almost like a
city council where, or likesome provisional government
that overrules all ofthem, maybe not overrules.
That might be a strongterm, maybe similar, like
the United nations that canset policies between all
(21:51):
of them, trade agreementagreements and stuff like that.
Lucas (21:53):
Yeah, that would definitely be interesting.
it's just now, do you thinkall habitats would enter into
that like city state mindset?
My personal thought on
Jacob (22:05):
this is that I think most habitats will
work as their own entity.
It'll be almostlike a city state.
It's a self containedgovernment, especially once
we get to a point wherethey separate themselves
from the governments thatoriginally launched them.
Maybe if we have 10, 000habitats orbiting Earth,
I think they would mostlyall work as their own
self sustained government.
And there might be allvarious types of different
(22:26):
government in these.
You could run the gauntlet ofall the way from socialist,
systems of government all theway down to like authoritarian
systems of government.
so you might pick ahabitat to live on based
on your political choice.
I want to live in a socialistone, or I want to live in a
free market, whatever habitat.
Habitat of your choice.
But I could also definitelyforesee there having to
(22:48):
be some sort of intercommunity police force.
I don't know if you'veever read any of the
Revelation Space books.
So there's a subset of thesebooks called the Prefect
Series with Tom Dreyfus.
There's a planet that has 10,000 orbital habitats around it.
And they have a special planet.
Police force that itdoesn't really police
anything that happens onthe habitat necessarily,
(23:08):
but it can police whathappens between the habitats.
Lucas (23:11):
Okay.
Jacob (23:11):
And I think you would have to run in that too, with
between earth, because whatif you have a habitat, right?
That with all their wasteproducts, which you're probably
going to always generatewaste products that you
have to offload somewhere.
And they're just throwingthese into space, polluting
the orbit, creatingdangerous debris for those
other habitats around them.
There, you're going toneed someone to step in
and say, you can't do that.
And maybe have sanctions.
(23:32):
Prevent trade going fromthem to other habitats
and stuff like that.
I could 100 percent seethere being some sort of
extra governmental force
Lucas (23:39):
like that.
like a force that exposed orthat enforces those universal
laws amongst all the habitats.
Jacob (23:46):
So there might be some sort of universal code of human
rights that every habitat hasto obey by, you might be able to
have a, dictator type governmentin your habitat, but you still
might have to follow these.
fundamental basic lawsthat the community as
a whole is settled on.
So as long as you obey bythose laws, you're good to go.
Okay.
And this also mightinclude stuff like
(24:06):
don't pollute the orbit.
Don't create debris for others.
And depending on how.
Far, you break those laws.
It might range the gauntletfrom sanctions on your
habitat, preventing youfrom trading, which, most of
these habitats probably won'tbe fully self sufficient.
So that could potentiallykill them if they don't start
to fall into line all theway to potentially maybe
even like a military action.
Lucas (24:26):
Yeah.
Which would be crazyto think about.
We, habitats.
They go up, they secede fromtheir governments, create their
own governments, then havedisputes with each other in
space, and then And go to war.
And then you just see ahabitat exploding just
like over the planet.
I feel like that wouldcause a lot of, dismay for
(24:47):
me, them going up there andseceding from countries.
I don't think that wouldbe an easy job either.
For them to just go upthere and be like, okay,
thanks for the resources.
and giving us a placeto build up our company,
but we're independent.
Jacob (24:59):
Yeah.
I think it could besimilar to how a colony
seceded from, like Britain.
A war.
Yeah, I guess that did.
There was some, not America.
There were some non Americancolonies that succeeded just
because over time it justbecame its own economic entity
and it just was no longerReally seen as a colony.
And, Britain ended upcutting them loose.
Lucas (25:21):
But that's at the mercy of Britain.
That is true.
Right now, these, we wouldalmost have to write in
an intergalactic law, thatyou could be, your own.
place, but you would have norights to build a military
weapons or anything like thatbecause you going up there
and Having wars in space aboveearth is not only dangerous
(25:42):
for the millions of peoplethat live on those Habitats,
but also the people ofearth because you're sending
huge habitats down We wouldhave to be a governing body
regardless because everythingthat they do would affect us
Jacob (25:53):
that is absolutely a fair point And it could
be also the case that eventhough these colonies or these
orbital habitats can say theysucceed or their, their own
economic entity, whomeverbuilds the first space force,
United States already has aUnited States space force.
Whoever builds the firstmilitary representation in
space might have the final say,you might say you're free, but
(26:13):
I have a bigger gun than you.
Lucas (26:14):
sometimes it's gotta be like that.
Like we just can't have,we can't have a marauder,
like a space habitat.
Cause that's what theydecided their government is.
Jacob (26:24):
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know how that'll work.
I do think though, it'llprobably follow the same pattern
we saw with colonization inthe 18, 17 to 18 hundreds up
until the modern day, whereeventually it just becomes too
much and it just, these becometheir own economic entity.
And over time they justdrift away from their
parent country until.
They succeed hopefully throughpolitics and not through war.
Lucas (26:47):
Right, which would be preferable.
But now let's saythat you succeed.
How do you decide whatyour borders are, right?
do you just pick?
Okay, I want thisquarter of the Sun.
I want Jupiter.
All right, becausewe live close to it.
Jacob (27:01):
I assume your borders are gonna be, just
be your space habitat.
Now you might have to fightfor specific Preferential
orbits, but space is big.
I don't really think thatwould be an issue either.
Lucas (27:11):
Yeah.
But then you're talking about,let's say that you have trade
routes set up and, there isno international government,
entity that polices outsideof those whose job is it if
the trade route is havingissues with either piracy or
something like that's one ofthem will have to take care
of it, but if it's in themiddle and there's no borders
claimed, Then, it'll just keepsaying, that's your problem.
(27:34):
That's your problem.
Jacob (27:35):
if you're imagining trying to pirate trades
going between two orbitalhabitats and earth's orbit,
for one, everyone's goingto see what's happening.
You can't hideanything in space.
it's very visible thatpiracy is going on.
So probably whichever habitatthese pirates are coming
from is going to face somesort of backlash from the
community as a whole, becausethey're affecting not just
(27:57):
the two habitats that are.
Trading with each other,but any debris they create
could junk up the orbit.
So they're also reallypissing off any other
habitat that also is usingthat same orbital space.
, tying back to what we weretalking about too, there might
be some inter coalitionalpolice force made up from
people that live in allsorts of these habitats.
A situation like thatprotecting trade routes
(28:18):
and stuff like that.
Lucas (28:19):
Yeah I definitely think that would be a great thing
I just feel like they shouldhave responsibility for a
certain amount of air spacethat would be around the habitat
Jacob (28:29):
Yeah There might be and almost might be like an
international water situationwhere you control a certain
volume of space around yourhabitat that Is considered
your space, maybe it'll be acase of, 500 meters from your
habitat is considered yourspace and anyone who violates
that, is subject to you.
I could see something like that
Lucas (28:46):
Okay.
So how do we maintain them?
the habitats, theyneed supplies.
Yes.
And supplies is very expensive.
If this is going to bea Commercial venture.
That means that peoplecan afford to pay for it.
Yes, So having something asexpensive as transporting
food, or water or, repairmaterials or medical supplies
up into these facilities.
(29:07):
I feel like might outweighthe possibility of people
being able to afford it.
Jacob (29:11):
that's working under the assumption you would be
transporting them up from Earth.
But once we have an orbitaleconomy, you wouldn't be
transporting them from Earth,you'd be transporting them
from other orbital habitats.
And in which case, it'sactually going to be cheaper.
Because it's, especially ifyou're taking from habitats
that are in a similar enoughorbit to you, it's really
cheap to ship stuff acrossspace versus even trucking it
(29:32):
across a country here on Earth.
So it wouldn't cost thatmuch money to import and
export things, and assumingthat they can also have
some sort of economic
Lucas (29:39):
output of themselves.
It will
Jacob (29:41):
actually be pretty cheap to do that.
it would be more expensiveto do it the further habitats
are away from each other.
If you have a habitat that'sin geostationary orbit, trying
to ship goods to a habitatthat's in low earth orbit,
there's a fairly large, it'scalled delta v, a change in
velocity that you have toinitiate to match those orbits.
But if you've got a bunch ofhabitats and low earth orbit.
(30:01):
the change in velocity, theDelta V between this habitats
is fairly low and it's prettycheap to transfer, goods
Lucas (30:06):
between them.
Okay.
So that's then saying thatthese habitats would be
able to get the raw materialand create the supplies.
By themselves and transportit amongst themselves having
a completely independenteconomy from Earth.
Jacob (30:20):
Yes, I think you could 100 percent have
and I think in many casesyou would have an orbital
economy that is independentfrom Earth because it is
so expensive to ship thingsup a gravity well, like we
discussed in our last episode.
I don't see you doing thatunless it's just something
that's insanely expensive.
So from earth, I think youwould, you could foresee
luxury goods being shipped up.
it's crazy cause it's heavy,but stuff like marble, it
(30:42):
would be really hard tomanufacture artificially.
It would be such a huge statussymbol on earth because of the
cost of shipping up the gravity.
Well, like luxury goodslike that would, and it
would be another one.
Although you could also growtrees on a orbital habitat.
So stuff like that.
Is what I could seebringing up from earth, but,
manufactured goods or foodstuff and stuff like that.
I actually foresee you justmanufacturing in orbit.
Lucas (31:03):
Okay.
Yeah.
So talking about like how wewould get food on these systems,
Talking about how an ecosystemwould be able to form and
we'd be able to maintain it.
I've been looking intoa lot about hydroponics,
hydroponics, essentially growingplants without soil, right?
Nutrient rich water that wecould run throughout these
(31:25):
systems to be able to createcrops and not just crops
that grow upright, how we'retraditionally used to, but
crops that are growing downfrom our walls or out of
bosses or in water that runsalong the walkways, however
you want to imagine it.
You could incorporate foodproduction into almost
anywhere on the habitats.
Jacob (31:44):
Oh yeah, anywhere where there's green space.
And in many ways,I think you would.
Because it looks nice.
People like having gardens.
Lucas (31:48):
Absolutely.
So let's say that we wantedto create a farm that could
support the amount of peoplethat would be on a habitat, like
you said, potentially millions.
I'm thinking, what wouldbe the most efficient
way of doing that?
Would we want to use sunlightor would we want to use
artificial light to create them?
Jacob (32:09):
I think probably artificial light, realistically,
no artificial light.
That's probably going to begenerated from solar collectors
somewhere else, or maybe if wehave fusion power, that's less
of an issue, but I think it'llprobably be artificial versus
trying to channel in sunlight.
Lucas (32:23):
Okay.
Now, I'm also thinking becauseif we are able to do it
efficiently, it might get to apoint to where we're trying to
grow crops on these stations,not just for the people that
are living on the stations, butwhat if we did it for earth?
Okay.
because earth, we're runningout of space, that more and
(32:43):
more people are living onhere and it's getting more
and more crowded in cities andwe're losing farmland every
year, to housing developments.
So there's been a concernthat we'll run out
of ways to grow food.
We've thought ofgrowing food in towers.
also using hydroponics, tobe able to grow the food.
But I think that if we couldutilize an orbital habitat to
(33:04):
sustain earth by growing allthe crops that it needs there,
I feel like that would be anefficient way of doing that.
Jacob (33:10):
I feel like we would explore vertical farming
on earth as an optionbefore farming in orbit and
shipping it down to earthjust because of the cost it
would take to deorbit it.
surely it would be cheaper togrow something in a skyscraper
on earth with artificiallighting versus growing it
in space and deorbiting it.
Lucas (33:28):
Yeah, I guess that's true.
I didn't really thinkabout having to deorbit it.
I almost just thought, you dropit out of the space or launch
it out of the space station,send it to earth with a.
A trajectory and thenlet it hit a parachute
once it enters orbit.
Jacob (33:43):
I guess one thing I could maybe see you doing to
make that a little more viable.
If you had an artificial farmin space, which I think, by
the way, for growing food inspace, even for the orbital
habitats in space, it's unlikelyhabitats are going to grow
food for themselves becausethat's just a waste of land.
I think you're gonnahave automatic farms that
grow food and Their wholebusiness is to export food
(34:04):
to these other habitats.
Almost like New York citydoesn't grow food for itself.
Like it's exportedfrom our rural area.
I think you'll see the samething with artificial habitats,
Lucas (34:11):
but it would still be using what technically a
habitat, but it would justbe like a floating farm.
Yeah.
That would then export goods
Jacob (34:19):
to other habitats where people actually live on it.
Cause you can make much betteruse of the land and you don't
have to worry about making itlook pretty or, be safe, but
what I'm thinking, If you'retalking about exporting food
to earth is, let's say you haveone of these artificial farms.
And it grows food andall that, and it wants to
shuttle food down to earth.
So if you can make a reallycheap, disposable capsule that
(34:40):
you can launch to earth and,it'll be safe for the landing,
potentially you could putthat on some sort of launching
system, like a railgun system,where it can accelerate it
really fast to kill all thatorbital velocity and send
it retrograde to earth so itcan just deorbit on its own.
Now, when you do that, it'salso going to push your
habitat in the other way.
And it's going to, Putmore energy into your
(35:00):
orbit is going to boostyou into a higher orbit.
So maybe you can also usethat to sell that orbital
trajectory or that energyyou're generating to boost
other habitats in the orbitor to launch ships the other
way, or to help maintain theorbits of the things as another
way to benefit from the energyyou're expending to launch
these capsules down to earth.
Lucas (35:18):
That's, it's a really interesting thought.
Just being able toharness that energy to.
to your advantage.
Yeah.
Jacob (35:24):
That way you're not just wasting it.
Cause if you just keep railgunning things down to earth,
eventually you're going toalter your orbit too much.
So you're going to have tosomehow cancel that out, or
you'll have to railgun thingsat different parts of your
orbit to cancel it out, or maybesell that, orbital velocity
somewhere else, use it to boostsatellites that are starting
to decay because anything inlow earth orbit, it's orbits
(35:45):
going to decay, so perhapsthat's a service you can sell.
Lucas (35:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
While it's alsosending your food down.
Yeah, exactly.
Way to
Jacob (35:52):
make, zero waste, right?
Try to benefit inevery way that you can.
Lucas (35:56):
Yeah.
I am.
I know when I was looking intoit, there was also, a huge
advantage to having that spacefarming though, would be.
being able to experiment andhave technological advancements
for planets that we think thatwe could colonize different
soil types, trying to exposeit to, different types of
(36:16):
ecosystems and gravities,things like that would be a
huge advantage for us movingforward with what we were trying
to do, as far as colonizing.
Jacob (36:24):
Okay.
So you're saying use theseorbital habitats as a test
bed to go ahead and experimentand find a system of
agriculture that works beforewe even get to a new colony.
Exactly.
Lucas (36:33):
Get all the guesswork out of it before you get there.
Jacob (36:36):
I could absolutely see that working.
yeah, that'd be really nice,especially if we're trying
to, utilize the regolithof Mars, for example.
And we want to find a wayto experiment with that.
That could be really goodto do in an orbital habitat.
You can simulatedifferent conditions.
You can simulate differentstages of terraforming and
figure out What kind oflife or what kind of plant
life we're going to needto make that could actually
survive on that soil and turnit into something useful.
(36:56):
That would 100 percentbe an interesting way we
could go about doing that.
Lucas (36:59):
Yeah.
and it would just beefficient for out there.
So if at the very least, ifwe can't grow plants for our
planet, we can figure outhow to grow plants on others.
Jacob (37:07):
Yeah, that would be really good.
I do like that.
The only way I could really seeyou wanting to, grow food in
orbit is going to be if it'scheaper to grow it in orbit
and de orbit it than it isgoing to be to grow on Earth.
And I think this will bepretty far into the future.
But one of the ways I couldsee that happening is if Earth
ever gets to a point whereland is just so expensive,
maybe it's like a whole planethas just turned into a city.
(37:30):
Or maybe, Due to ecologicalissues, growing food on earth
is so expensive that it couldbe better to grow it in space.
That's another alternativeI could see where space
farming could actuallymake a lot of sense.
yeah, I
Lucas (37:41):
mean it, I feel like there really are a lot of
benefits to growing, in space.
And the reason why atfirst I was thinking about
doing it on the habitats.
is because when astronautswere shown pictures of
fresh foods on the ISS, itactually increased their mood.
That's crazy.
you got to think you're outthere drinking out of a tube,
of Angus burger tube with theconsistency of toothpaste.
(38:06):
I would love to seea beautiful tomato.
Yeah, I would make my day.
Jacob (38:09):
Absolutely.
And I do think you're goingto have orbital habitats whose
entire Focus is on growing food.
And I think those are goingto, I think that's going to
be a whole economic nichein space is just grow food,
have a whole habitat thatall it is an orbital farm.
It grows food and it sendsthat food, adjacent habitats so
they can feed their populace.
Lucas (38:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
So where do you think that thesehabitats would go in the future?
What's the nextstep once we master.
Habitats around our own planet.
Jacob (38:36):
one of the things we're going to use these habitats
for is to colonize otherplanets, because I know there's
this idea in science fiction.
You see it all the time where wego to a new planet, we colonize
the planet, and then we buildthe orbital infrastructure
from there, but that's reallythe backwards way to do it,
and I don't think realistic,I think the more realistic way
we're going to see this happen.
Yeah.
Is let's say we want to colonizeMars or we want to colonize
(38:58):
Venus or even go to anothersolar system altogether.
We're going to arrive inspace and we're going to
build a orbital infrastructurearound that planet first,
which is going to consistof the space habitats, these
O'Neill cylinders, spacestations, and all of that.
Once we have establishedthe orbital infrastructure
around that planet.
We're then going to use thatorbital infrastructure to
(39:19):
aid the colonizing efforton the planet itself.
Whether it needs to beterraformed or not, whatever.
It's just, it's nice to havethat orbital infrastructure
as a safety net because youcan grow food in space and
ship it down to the colonistswhile they're trying to
figure out their farming.
there's not this notion thatcrops are going to fail and
they're all going to diebecause you already have
farms in space that cansupply you indefinitely.
And once you have that orbitalinfrastructure doing everything
(39:39):
else just gets so much cheaper.
Lucas (39:42):
thinking about it now and talking about it, it's like, why
even colonize a planet if you'reso efficient with the habitats,
it's so much easier to transportstuff and you're mastering,
how it spins and how everythinginteracts and interlocks with
every, you're on a perfectplanet where you don't have to
worry about natural disasters.
Jacob (40:00):
Perfect.
And every way you want, youcan, this can be exactly
how you want it to be.
You, the weather can be70 degrees and sunny every
day, all day, every day.
It can be perfect.
It can be cold and Arcticif that's what you want,
whatever you want, you canmake a habitat that has that.
Lucas (40:12):
Yeah.
So it's like, whyeven go through the.
Absolute horrible, endeavorthat it would be to colonize
and terraform a planet whenyou can just build your own.
Jacob (40:23):
I agree with that.
I think actually ashumanity goes forward, I
think more and more peopleare gonna live in space.
And I think as you take thatto the logical extreme with
time, the space populationwill eventually outnumber the
planetary populations becauseof what you're talking about.
It's just so much easier tobuild exactly what you want.
It's gonna be safer, I think,in the long run, and it's a
better use of resources because.
(40:44):
So if you were to disassemblea planet, for example, and turn
all of the planetary materialinto orbital habitats, you get
orders of magnitude more livingspace, because you can only
live on the surface area of aplanet, whereas if you use that
material, you basically canuse the whole volume of that
planet to make living space, andjust get, orders of magnitude
(41:05):
more livable area than youwill ever have on a planet.
Lucas (41:09):
that, That just seems like the logical step.
I've never thought of it thatway, but you know that just
Seems like that's what peoplewould do if we really did master
your habitats to the pointthat we're talking about today
Jacob (41:21):
I absolutely think that's what people are gonna do I think
we're gonna have more peopleliving in orbit of planets and
in orbit of Suns Then we aregonna have living on planets
and colonizing new planets.
So
Lucas (41:32):
then Now, I'm wondering, what are these
habitats running off of?
Would it be solar?
Jacob (41:37):
that is going to really depend on what
kind of energy technologywe have in the future.
Perhaps it'll be nuclear fusion,if we have, if we ever achieve
cheap and reliable fusion.
it could even be fission,or yeah, solar could
be a great example.
You could, incorporate these.
If you imagine, you could justtake these, cylinders, put
them in orbit around a star.
And then in addition tothese cylinders, you could
(41:58):
have solar collectors thatcollect that energy and feed
it back to the habitats thatpeople live on, and then that
could be the energy source.
So there's multiple avenuesyou could explore, and
it'll also probably changedepending on where you are,
putting these habitats.
So if you're putting themin the inner solar system,
Solar makes a lot more sense.
If you're putting them in theouter solar system, toward
where the gas giants are, maybesolar starts to make less sense.
(42:20):
And you start to lean moretowards something like a
fusion source of energy.
Lucas (42:22):
fusion, if we were able to get a reliable
fusion generator, I feel likethat would just be the best
option because you could.
You could have driftinghabitats, right?
that could have trajectoriesand they don't have to worry
about getting sunlight or, onesthat could orbit, planets or
stars that move very slowlyand they're out of the sun
for, five months at a time.
(42:43):
that's, it's just like whenyou think about it that way, if
we were to make them modular,you pull up with the, The
ring distributor, throw itout there and it opens up like
a transformer and you have ahabitat for a 10 million people.
Jacob (42:56):
Yeah.
I think that's similarto how we would do it.
You can also build a habitatand start linking them
together and make them aslong as you want it to be.
There's even a hypothetical,mega structure, which is
essentially a giant cylindricalhabitat that just is one habitat
that wraps around a star.
Lucas (43:09):
Yeah.
it's that, why not?
If you're thinking aboutit, just make them modular
and then we could colonizewherever we could get them to.
Jacob (43:16):
Yeah, I do believe that's where you're going
to get to an extent.
I wonder how modularthey would be.
Would it be almost likea modular home where you
change the countertops?
you pick, you're like,Oh, I want a mountain top.
I want a river that spiralsaround the cylinder.
what model?
Okay.
Yeah, that's not how Iwant the river, but that's
the model we'll take.
I want the model that has theocean in the middle, or maybe
a ring ocean in the middle.
Lucas (43:36):
I mean, why not?
Because if we have thetechnology to build these
living spaces and they're, 15kilometers across or whatever,
that's a lot of space.
Yes.
It's a humongous amount.
an ecosystem.
So might as well haveyour engineers design.
Preferential ones.
And then the peoplecan have their choice.
(43:56):
Yeah.
That's going to be
Jacob (43:56):
crazy to think about that.
if you do just go to themanufacturer and yeah, I
want one with mountains,let's see, what models do
you have, the showroom floor?
Have you ever seen, have youever read the Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy books?
Yeah.
There's the one scenewhere they bring them in
and it's all the differentplanets they're building.
And they're like, Oh,this is the whatever model
picked by the species.
Cause they wanted this.
And I wonder if it's gonna belike that with orbital habitats.
Lucas (44:18):
it definitely could be for the rich, right.
And the powerful us plebeianswill have to settle with
a lakeside house on, ringworld two, five, seven, where
it is, But, it definitelycould be like that.
the people who own thecompany and these people
that own all the othercompanies out there that
are doing this space mining.
they could have entire likecompany sections that they just
(44:41):
build out however they want.
Jacob (44:42):
Absolutely.
I could see that.
Maybe they're prettylike flat and not barren,
but not great either.
more like a field out in likethe middle of the United States.
It's just that.
Lucas (44:50):
And then a top golf.
Yeah, no, but, it reallyis interesting to think
about what we couldachieve if we could master.
Yes.
You can go
Jacob (45:00):
crazy with them.
you really could put like aring ocean in these that's
half a kilometer long,or even a kilometer long.
It goes around the whole orbit.
You can put yachtson that ocean.
You could have rivers, thesnake from one end cap to
the other of the cylinder.
you can really goall out with these.
There's skies to limit.
Lucas (45:16):
No, let's say that they're running efficiently.
These habitats are built torun for a hundred thousand
years or whatever, speculative,but now we're 60, 000
years in the future and thecreatures that are living in
that ocean that you built.
What are theygoing to look like?
Jacob (45:32):
Would they be affected at all?
That's a point Ididn't think about.
So presumably, it's still oneearth gravity and all that.
they're not, they'rein an ecosystem that's
similar to the, to earth.
That's not going to evolveinto be something crazy
and alien, but it isn'tisolated, ecological habitat.
So I do wonder over a longperiod of time, if we are going
to start seeing evolutionarydrift between species that
(45:53):
are all spread out throughthese habitats, because
I'm assuming you're goingto take that into account.
Fairly common Earth speciesthat we all know and love,
maybe, certain types of fish sothat people can enjoy fishing.
But if you put these on ahundred million different
habitats and let that goover the course of thousands
of years, yeah, they willeventually evolve to be
completely different species.
Not over thousands of years,but over hundreds of thousands
(46:13):
of millions of years.
That's a great question.
Lucas (46:16):
Yeah, I just think it would be interesting.
I'm trying to think aboutways that you could mess with
how gravity interacts withthe centripetal force of it.
Turning.
If you had a fish thatlearned that it could
swim slightly faster.
Going to the right, likeagainst the turn of it, or
it could do it going with it.
Either way, would therebe fish that evolved to
(46:38):
always swim to the right?
Regardless, cause they wouldend back up in the same point.
Yeah.
Jacob (46:43):
I don't think, if you can feel the difference in force,
then it's probably going to bea very uncomfortable habitat.
So I don't think there wouldbe, it'd be like trying to
run saying I run faster.
If I run in the directionof earth's rotation.
Lucas (46:53):
Yeah.
It's just, I don't know.
I feel like there, therewould be something in there
that would cause a differencein evolution, but maybe not.
Jacob (47:02):
it's going to be a completely artificial
controlled environment.
So it might be a case of youfind species of fish evolve
to feed closer to the waterfilters, maybe that keep the
oceans clean or the lakes clean.
there's got to be an inlet andan outlet port for these things.
So maybe there's whole newecological niches that open up
and these artificial areas orwe're interacting with these.
(47:22):
So I could potentially seethat happening for sure.
Lucas (47:25):
Okay.
Awesome.
Jacob (47:27):
Thank you so much for listening to the show.
We both sincerelyhope you enjoyed it.
You can keep up on thelatest news over on our
website at entropy rising.
com or join the conversation atour subreddit, Rising Entropy.
We release a new episodeevery other week, so
follow to stay in the loop.
Hello and welcome to Entropy Rising, where we talk
(00:02):
about science and futurism.
I'm your host, Jacob, and I'mhere with my co host, Lucas.
Lucas, how are you doing?
I'm doing great, Jake.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
I'm happy to haveyou here today.
Lucas (00:11):
Happy to be here.
Jacob (00:12):
All right.
So let's jump into it today.
I know we are going to befocusing solely on orbital
habitation, specificallyWhat life's going to look
like when we live in earth'sorbit, focusing mostly on
just living around earth,not the solar system as a
whole, or, living on the moon.
Not yet.
Not this episode.
I was really excitedabout this one.
I specifically wantto talk about the idea
(00:33):
of O'Neill cylinders.
Are you familiar withO'Neill cylinders?
I'm not too familiar with them.
Really?
I figured you wouldbe all about them.
So O'Neill cylindersare basically a type of
cylindrical orbital habitat.
And what makes it an O'Neillcylinder versus just, an
orbital habitat is the size.
So O'Neill cylinders aretypically shown as being
(00:57):
around two to four kilometersin radius or in diameter.
And as long as you want themto be, but typically, between
eight and 12 kilometers long.
So they're these very largeorbital habitats, and they give
you a lot of living space, likean absolute ton of living space.
And you can spin them up,and you can have whatever
gravity you want, but youknow, realistically, probably
(01:18):
about one Earth gravity.
Lucas (01:20):
Okay.
So when you're living on a shipthat is an O'Neill Cylinder,
or an orbital habitat thathas an O'Neill Cylinder, Where
are you living on the ship?
Is it on the rings?
Jacob (01:31):
Yeah.
So you're living on the interiorsurface of the cylinder.
Okay.
And when you spin it up, you'regoing to get artificial gravity.
through, it's a fake force,but centrifugal force
is what gives you thesensation of having gravity.
So we can make, smaller,cylindrical habitats.
We don't have to go as bigas an O'Neill cylinder.
And I think obviously our firstgallivance into earth's orbit,
(01:51):
we're probably not going tobe making an O'Neill cylinder,
but there is an advantage tomaking it that big, which is the
larger in diameter you make thiscylinder, the more comfortable
it feels for the inhabitants,because when you have a
smaller rotating cylinder,the smaller the cylinder is.
The faster you have torotate it to get the
same amount of gravity.
Lucas (02:12):
Okay.
Jacob (02:12):
And at a certain point, if it's too small,
there's actually a forceimbalance between what you
feel on your head and whatyou feel on your feet.
I
Lucas (02:19):
see.
Jacob (02:20):
And I don't know if you've ever seen like one
of these videos of people,they're on like a merry go
round and they're throwinga ball back and forth.
And if it's shot from theperspective of the people on
the merry go round, it lookslike to them, you're throwing
the ball straight, but it justmagically veers off to the left.
that's essentially what wouldhappen if you lived on a really
small orbital habitat is anytimeyou try to stand up you would
feel this artificial forcepushing you over to the side.
(02:42):
And it can be reallydisorientating.
So we really need to buildthese things fairly large.
Not crazy.
I think something along thelines of, 150 meters in radius
and you can get up to about,spin it at about 2 RPM and
still have a very comfortablegravity and people aren't
going to feel sick on these.
But bigger is better.
Lucas (03:00):
150 meters.
That's actually smallerthan what I think.
Oh,
Jacob (03:04):
really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not so bad.
You can go smaller.
I think when I was doingthe math, they predicted you
could get as low as maybe 75meters with one earth gravity.
It will be uncomfortable,but a lot of the papers I was
reading predict Most peoplecould adapt to that fairly
well, but, bigger than about150 meters and you can just.
throw your average personon that and they're
(03:25):
just going to feel fine.
Lucas (03:27):
Okay.
Now let's say that we'rethrowing a person on that,
but also, their house andtheir dog and all their
kids right on the cylinder.
And it's only 150 meters.
you're looking up and yousee your neighbors above you.
So you're spitting
Jacob (03:41):
150 meters is probably going to be More along the
lines of what we see forsomething like a space hotel.
This is going to be ourfirst steps into space.
Likely not going to bewhat we see for permanent
space habitation.
Now, when you're talkingabout throwing someone's
family on there, these mightbe, the O'Neill cylinders.
Something that's 2 3kilometers in diameter.
(04:03):
Or kilometers in radius.
Now, the cool thing, thereason I keep mentioning 2
3 kilometers is that's Thatat that point, we can build
that with modern technology.
You can make somethingout of steel that's three
to four kilometers indiameter, spin it fast
enough for one earth gravityand not have a fly apart.
Okay.
Any bigger than that and youreally start getting into
needing something like carbonnanotubes or some fiction
(04:26):
as material with a highertensile strength than steel.
But you do, you areabsolutely right.
even two to four kilometers inradius, you are still going to
be able to look up and see yourneighbor's yard or, see, On the
other side of that cylinder.
Lucas (04:39):
Yeah.
It'll be just like, haveyou ever played halo?
I have played halo.
Yes.
Just like looking upat the halo rings.
Yeah, absolutely.
When but that's technically,that's a ring world, isn't it?
That's not what I know.
And you'll say, yeah,
Jacob (04:52):
yeah.
Halo is a ring world.
And as far as we know,physically impossible to
build, unless you have somesuper material that just,
we don't have a, We can'tconceptualize something like
that, even carbon nanotubesin there, theoretically,
as perfect as you make themwould not be strong enough to
build something like a halo.
You would really need somebeyond our current level of
understanding of physics rightnow to a material strong enough
(05:12):
to build something like a halo.
Lucas (05:14):
Absolutely.
Jacob (05:14):
But you are right.
that is a problem.
If you are living on oneof these habitats, you
could potentially look up.
And see across thehabitat because four
kilometers isn't that far.
You can see four kilometerson a nice sunny day if
you stand on a building.
So there may be our wayswe can mitigate that.
you're going to want anartificial sun and you're
going to want some kindof artificial sky anyways.
(05:35):
Now you will naturally getatmospheric haze and a bluing of
the scattering of the light, butnot to the same extent as Earth.
So what we could potentiallydo is build a smaller cylinder
inside of the larger cylinder,which would be, at the
center of the cylinder you'regoing to have zero gravity.
So maybe you could use thatfor some type of Zero gravity
construction, if there's anymanufacturing techniques that
(05:57):
benefit in zero gravity, ormaybe a control center, storage
for anything, because it's notgoing to be affected by gravity.
And then on the outside of thatcylinder, you could potentially
put screens and simulate a bluesky, and this would also Block
people's view so that, you'renot out in your yard and having
someone on the other side ofthe cylinder look down at you.
Yeah.
Lucas (06:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That could definitely work now.
If the screen was above thosepeople, Creating the blue
sky, but also blocking them.
How did they receivethe artificial light?
Would it be from thelights above them?
Jacob (06:26):
Yeah.
Potentially.
you could just have thescreen represent the
sun and be very bright.
Okay, so a UV light thatalso represents a blue sky.
Yeah, absolutely.
you could 100 percent do that.
theoretically, you couldactually build several layers
of this where maybe the sky isonly 150 meters or so above it.
And there's a screen therethat simulates the sky.
(06:47):
And it makes you feel likeyou're nice out and open.
And with a four or fivekilometer diameter cylinder,
you're not going to, you'regoing to see some curvature,
but it's not gonna be too crazy.
So it might feel likeyou're out on earth.
Lucas (06:57):
That definitely would be more efficient.
Yeah.
But what that makes me wonderis how did the people get on?
If they were that closetogether, you wouldn't
be able to land a shipto drop them off, right?
What do you mean by that?
Like you can't stop thecylinders from moving to
put new passengers on.
Jacob (07:11):
No.
So you would probably have,space docks at the, Poles of
the cylinder, at the caps,basically, where you could
fly into that and you'llhave a zero gravity area.
The only thing you'll reallyhave to do is match the rotation
of the cylinder, but for biggercylinders like this, they're
not rotating all that fast.
So it's not gonna beso hard to land a ship
in the center of these.
Yeah.
Okay.
(07:32):
Which, I think a lot of people,when they imagine an O'Neill
Cylinder, and if you check ourwebsite, the O'Neill Cylinder
I put in the background there,It's like this metal ring,
but because of micro asteroidstrikes and orbital debris,
you're probably going towant some type of shielding
from you and your space.
You want a nice thickwall of something.
Absolutely.
Now process metalcan be expensive.
So one of the ways you could dothis is you could potentially.
(07:54):
Build these orbital habitatsinto an asteroid and then
you have a nice rocky surfacekeeping your habitat space
and it just spins inside ofa Mind out section of that
asteroid and you potentiallyhave an asteroid where the whole
surface of the asteroid is justpolka dotted with all these
Orbital habitats for safety.
Lucas (08:10):
That would be incredible.
it's an interesting conceptto avoid, damaging yourself
and being able to provideprotection for your habitats.
Absolutely.
Jacob (08:17):
Another one is you could have a non spinning outer shell.
of this habitat.
Okay.
Now you could make that outof something like, metal,
steel, or whatever, andthat would absolutely work.
But you could also just pile onleftover debris from a, maybe
if you're bringing asteroidsinto one of the Lagrangian
points of the Earth Moon orbit.
When you're done withthat, there's gonna be a
lot of rubble left over.
(08:38):
Maybe a profitable use of thatextra rubble will be to use it
to surround the orbital habitatsand their non rotating shell,
just to give you a nice thickshell of rock so that if there's
a micrometeorite strike, it'snot going to puncture your
habitat and kill everybody.
Lucas (08:50):
Just making space trash shields.
Jacob (08:52):
Yeah, exactly.
just use some type of adhesive,glue them all together
on the outer side of your
Lucas (08:59):
Elmer's glue out to make such an
advanced habitat.
I don't know.
I feel like that wouldbe a little ghetto.
Yeah,
Jacob (09:08):
but if it works.
it makes use of all thoseleftover debris that would
otherwise just be cloggingup some of your orbit.
Lucas (09:14):
So how would we hold a non orbiting shield that goes
around an orbiting habitat?
Jacob (09:21):
What do you mean?
Non
Lucas (09:22):
orbiting or non spinning?
Sorry.
Jacob (09:24):
Yeah.
you could potentially justhave two cylinder approach.
You've got one cylinderthat spins inside of
an outer cylinder.
Yeah.
Maybe that's connectedthrough a bearing.
Maybe there's magneticfields that hold it there.
some type ofmechanical connection.
Or maybe it's justfree floating.
Maybe not free floating becausethen there's a risk they
could drift into each other.
But I think it would justbe some type of connection
where you have an outerspinning section or an outer
non spinning section and thenan inner spinning section.
Lucas (09:46):
Okay.
like how a globe, itcould be fixed at those
top and bottom points.
Yeah, exactly.
The outside would notspin, but the inside would.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
And do you think that spacedebris would be enough to
make people feel safe to liveon one of those habitats?
Jacob (10:01):
yeah, you could potentially have, tens of
meters of thick, solid stonebetween the outer wall of
your habitat and space.
you can go as crazy as you want.
I could potentially seea group of people who are
extra paranoid, even goingfurther than that, having,
half a kilometer thick.
Stone surrounding their spacehabitat because they're just
that paranoid or maybe it'sa military installation.
(10:23):
I don't know, but
Lucas (10:24):
and they got the paranoia package.
Yes, exactly.
30 feet of solid concrete.
Yeah, you're fine.
Jacob (10:34):
But then has rock outside of
Lucas (10:35):
it.
Yeah, we piled onextra rocks for you.
No, that, that issuper interesting.
So going into, how you'rethinking that they're built,
is there any other challengesthat we would face with
these habitats in space?
Jacob (10:48):
space debris would be a really big one.
that would probably beone of the largest ones.
Radiation would be another hugeissue we're going to have with
these, which also ties backinto, you know, why you would
want to maybe build them into anasteroid that's already there,
or you would want to surroundthem with stone, like really
thick stone, because that wouldalso act as radiation shielding
and just make it safer forpeople in terms of that as well.
Those would be the two largestissues on the safety front.
Lucas (11:10):
Awesome.
So now let's talk alittle bit about what it
would be like, being upthere in those cylinders.
as far as let's say amore permanent residence,
not just tourism.
how do you think lifewould develop on?
a spinning, cylinder type,floating habitat, or just on a
traditional, a large deluxe ISS.
Jacob (11:31):
I think the benefit of the spinning habitat
versus the ISS is gravity.
And another benefit is youcan really make life be
whatever you want it to be.
Do you want to livein a huge city?
If so, you can build thatin one of these cylinders.
You can have the populationdensity of New York.
you can make it aslong as you want.
So you can have more landarea than New York, London,
(11:52):
whatever city you want.
And you can build skyscrapersand it would feel pretty
much like you live ina giant city, right?
You could have cars drivingaround, It could really feel
just like on earth with maybethe only difference being
there's a slight curvatureoff to the sides that
you notice alternatively.
You could make it almostlike a nature preserve.
It could be lush farmlandsand full of trees with maybe
(12:14):
a very low population density.
I could even envisionhabitats where
it's effectively almost likea national park where very
few people live there exceptfor some very wealthy patrons
that maybe agree to abide bycertain regulations to keep the
lands pure and this cylindricalhabitat may only have a handful
of people who live on, lush,huge Country estates and then
(12:36):
it might have a segregated areawhere there's some tourism going
on to help fund the whole thingOr maybe it'll be solely funded
by just really rich peoplewho want to have all of this
nice pristine untouched land
Lucas (12:47):
Okay, what if it was like, like commercialized
turned into something thatcould be used as like a research
facility or you know themanufacturing of Luxury goods.
Absolutely.
You could do that.
Jacob (13:01):
I think likely you would separate out your manufacturing
facilities versus your livingfacilities Because why would
you take up valuable livingreal estate, for manufacturing,
your manufacturing buildingsdon't need to have a view you
could really build like a if youneeded gravity to manufacture
something in space I couldimagine a cylindrical habitat
that has multiple layers to it.
(13:21):
I mean you could do Youknow 50 60 layers that
are 10 meters, You Dick.
Yeah.
And, 0.
5 kilometers.
That's, you're going tohave pretty sufficient
gravity even in the lowestgravity of those layers.
Because as you move toward thecenter of the habitat, gravity
is going to get lower and lower.
So you can't, build these layersall the way to the center.
But maybe you could, maybesome manufacturing techniques
we'll find will workbetter with lower gravity.
Lucas (13:44):
Yeah.
they would definitely be betterfor the manufacturing of,
spaceships and their parts.
that would probably be thestart to how we got something
going because we would needpeople to be living on them.
Assuming that we're notusing robots or AI yet.
Jacob (13:57):
Yeah, I think that's actually the most likely case.
Like what you just said.
I think once we start buildingout our orbital economy, we're
going to start building shipsor we're going to find some
other manufacturing techniquesthat are beneficial or it's
better to do it in low gravityto the point of offsets the
cost of doing it in orbitand shipping it to earth.
And then naturally we'regoing to need people to
live on these habitats.
And you've seen theresearch that's came
(14:19):
back from like the ISS.
People really don't farewell living in zero gravity.
There's all kinds ofmedical issues that causes.
And it's also just not fun.
Everything is a challenge.
Eating is a challenge.
Sleeping is a challenge.
people report they feelstuffy all the time because
the fluid distribution inyour body gets messed up.
So people are going to wantto live in a gravity field
(14:41):
or in artificial gravity.
Even if the manufacturing itselfis happening in zero gravity.
Lucas (14:45):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
the zero gravity just bringsa lot of stress on the
mentally and physically onyourself and your, if you
are bringing your family.
Jacob (14:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I definitely foresee asituation where, you could
imagine there's this zerogravity construction yard
building, maybe ships to gomine the outer solar system,
like what we talked aboutlast week, and they have a,
some type of orbital habitat.
adjacent to this that's spun upto give the workers artificial
gravity whenever they're notworking and stuff like that.
(15:15):
Yeah.
That's actually, that's howI foresee a lot of people
moving from earth to orbit.
Cause I think it's going tobe very expensive to move from
earth into an orbital habitat.
Lucas (15:24):
Yeah, I would think so as well.
maybe in the very beginningit would be cheaper
because they need people.
And you know, I don't wantto be the first guy on the
experimental orbital habitat.
Absolutely.
Jacob (15:37):
That's actually, that you bring that up is a good
point, because I think a lotof people are going to be very
scared of these habitats atfirst, because I think there's
going to be this like pervasivepsyche of what if something
goes wrong, because everyone'sgoing to be frightened of it.
Lucas (15:48):
And then something will go wrong eventually, right?
I
Jacob (15:50):
mean, maybe, but it could be the case that these
habitats are safer than Earth,given all the natural disasters,
earthquakes, and hurricanes.
Yeah.
But even if they're a hundredtimes safer than Earth, I think
people are going to naturally bemore afraid of living on them.
I mean, flying is significantlysafer than driving, but You
very rarely see people whoare afraid of driving, but
I meet all kinds of peoplewho are afraid of flying.
Lucas (16:10):
Yeah, because you feel like if something does
go wrong, there's nothingyou can do to stop it.
It's not in your control at all.
Jacob (16:15):
Yeah, exactly.
So I think that wouldalso be, prevalent in
the psyche of people wholive on these habitats.
And I think you could evensee very harsh punishments for
people who affect these habitatsin any way, shape, or form.
If you're seen as someonetampering with the habitat,
there might be some fairlyharsh punishments for that.
Even if what you're doingis relatively harmless,
but Just to prove a point,we don't take this at all.
Lucas (16:36):
Yeah.
that's how it would need to be.
Cause you are talkingabout the lives of hundreds
of thousands of people.
You
Jacob (16:41):
can potentially hold millions of people
in these habitats, which
Lucas (16:45):
is crazy.
Cause
Jacob (16:45):
like I said, you can make them have land area greater
than New York city, greater thanLondon and population densities,
even greater than those two.
So you could have millions,tens of millions of people
on some of these habitats,and you can really customize
these habitats to be asbig or small as you want.
if you wanted a one familyhome that is, has one earth
gravity, you could potentiallyjust, build the home, put a
(17:07):
tether on the top of it, puta big old counterweight on
the other end of that tetherand spin the whole thing up.
So if you're really rich,maybe that's what you're
going to have your ownprivate, orbital reputation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you can buildthem like rings.
You can really go crazy with it.
really the only thing we haveto be mindful of is the radius.
You can't go toosmall or they're just
really uncomfortable.
Lucas (17:27):
Now, when you sound comfortable, they'd still work.
Jacob (17:29):
they would still
Lucas (17:29):
work.
You could, you would justlistings left or right,
depending on how it's spinning.
Jacob (17:35):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
You would feel verydisorientated if you were on
these, because the sensationto your feet, to your head
would be very different.
Make it give you verybad motion sickness.
Lucas (17:43):
Got it.
So I'd rather be
Jacob (17:44):
dead.
Yeah.
It'd be like a torture chamberif you had a really small one.
. Also, if it's too small,when you go to stand up,
you might just get knockedover by the force imbalance.
Lucas (17:52):
Yeah, you're essentially just a washing
machine at that point.
Yeah, exactly.
Or a dryer.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, who do you thinkis going to be able
to get up there first?
Because I feel like,commercially, especially
with SpaceX and everythingthat they're doing, and
they're having some othercompanies come out and start
developing ships that theyare saying they want to use
(18:12):
for commercial spaceflight.
in the future, do you thinkthat our government would
invest at all into theseorbital habitats or would
it be entirely commercial?
Because I think it mightend up being almost
entirely commercial.
Jacob (18:23):
I think I agree with you., uh, government investing
space travel is how it'salways been done in the past.
look at the ISS, but I doagree with you going forward.
I do believe it willprobably largely
Lucas (18:32):
be commercial.
Yeah.
And now assuming thatwe will still need some
type of government onthese habitats, though.
And, how do you thinkthat would work?
Jacob (18:40):
Yeah.
So I think that in the beginningstages, it's going to be almost
like How you see maritime lawnow where it's really almost
a free for all there's somelarge wide sweeping General
laws for the most part.
It's every man for himself And Ithink every habitat is going to
be allowed to essentially governitself any way it sees fit and
(19:03):
especially When companies arefirst building these habitats,
it's probably just gonna fallunder it's corporate Oversight
of how they want to do it.
My prediction is though, likelythe actual laws governing what
can and can't go on in thesehabitats is going to be based
on whichever country, uh, thecorporation that owns these
habitats is based in, prettymuch like how cruise ships work
(19:24):
now, whatever your port of callis, is the laws that you follow.
I see.
I think that's how we'llprobably see it in the beginning
Lucas (19:29):
stages.
That would make sense, right?
Because the entire thing,I feel like you were
saying earlier, but juststart off as space hotels.
Yes, exactly.
nobody's going to go up there tolive, first of all, it'll just
be, I want to go and see space.
I want to buy ElonMusk's ticket, right?
To fly up there.
Jacob (19:43):
Exactly.
And I mean, there will be peoplewho maybe don't live there,
but in the same way that peoplelive on cruise ships, right?
Sign up to do likea stint of time.
Lucas (19:50):
If you're bartenders and, you're, you're people who bust
on tables, maintain the ship,engineers, things like that.
Yeah, it, it is interesting tothink that it's, it would just
be a giant floating cruise ship.
Yeah, exactly.
Jacob (20:03):
So there are some legislations in place.
the outer space treatyis a famous one, right?
And I, it's not that it'snot worth talking about.
But I'm willing to bet thatthing just falls apart the
minute money gets involved.
it was made as a very idealisticpiece of legislation that was
made when people thought thatthere was no value to space.
It's very easy to have thesenoble and lofty ideals of how
(20:25):
you'll treat a piece of landif it's not worth anything.
Same thing with space.
So my prediction isthat's not going to.
Maybe in the beginning, earlystages, but I don't think
that'll really govern how wedo things very much at all.
But I do think as we get alittle more advanced, we start
building more and more of thesehabitats, more laws are going
to be brought into question.
Because what happens when youhave your first group of people
(20:46):
band together to build one ofthese habitats, and they don't
want to be with any country?
Or what happens when you havethis orbital habitat, maybe
that's based in some countrythat has less regulations,
and they're using it as a wayto commit crimes on countries
that have more regulations,like a tax haven, or maybe
they're, laundering money ordoing all these, financial
frauds against the U.
S.
or something, but they'rebased in another country,
(21:08):
and they're located inspace, or maybe they're
not based in any country.
They declared themselvestheir own unique thing.
Lucas (21:13):
if it was, legal to be able to claim yourself
as just like your own thing,a man of no country, right?
I feel like there would be afew other things that would
have to happen because,doing that nowadays, like
you can't do that, right?
Jacob (21:30):
that's actually a good point.
you could definitely seea situation maybe where
individual habitats operatealmost like a city state.
But a group of habitatsmight have a, almost like a
city council where, or likesome provisional government
that overrules all ofthem, maybe not overrules.
That might be a strongterm, maybe similar, like
the United nations that canset policies between all
(21:51):
of them, trade agreementagreements and stuff like that.
Lucas (21:53):
Yeah, that would definitely be interesting.
it's just now, do you thinkall habitats would enter into
that like city state mindset?
My personal thought on
Jacob (22:05):
this is that I think most habitats will
work as their own entity.
It'll be almostlike a city state.
It's a self containedgovernment, especially once
we get to a point wherethey separate themselves
from the governments thatoriginally launched them.
Maybe if we have 10, 000habitats orbiting Earth,
I think they would mostlyall work as their own
self sustained government.
And there might be allvarious types of different
(22:26):
government in these.
You could run the gauntlet ofall the way from socialist,
systems of government all theway down to like authoritarian
systems of government.
so you might pick ahabitat to live on based
on your political choice.
I want to live in a socialistone, or I want to live in a
free market, whatever habitat.
Habitat of your choice.
But I could also definitelyforesee there having to
(22:48):
be some sort of intercommunity police force.
I don't know if you'veever read any of the
Revelation Space books.
So there's a subset of thesebooks called the Prefect
Series with Tom Dreyfus.
There's a planet that has 10,000 orbital habitats around it.
And they have a special planet.
Police force that itdoesn't really police
anything that happens onthe habitat necessarily,
(23:08):
but it can police whathappens between the habitats.
Lucas (23:11):
Okay.
Jacob (23:11):
And I think you would have to run in that too, with
between earth, because whatif you have a habitat, right?
That with all their wasteproducts, which you're probably
going to always generatewaste products that you
have to offload somewhere.
And they're just throwingthese into space, polluting
the orbit, creatingdangerous debris for those
other habitats around them.
There, you're going toneed someone to step in
and say, you can't do that.
And maybe have sanctions.
(23:32):
Prevent trade going fromthem to other habitats
and stuff like that.
I could 100 percent seethere being some sort of
extra governmental force
Lucas (23:39):
like that.
like a force that exposed orthat enforces those universal
laws amongst all the habitats.
Jacob (23:46):
So there might be some sort of universal code of human
rights that every habitat hasto obey by, you might be able to
have a, dictator type governmentin your habitat, but you still
might have to follow these.
fundamental basic lawsthat the community as
a whole is settled on.
So as long as you obey bythose laws, you're good to go.
Okay.
And this also mightinclude stuff like
(24:06):
don't pollute the orbit.
Don't create debris for others.
And depending on how.
Far, you break those laws.
It might range the gauntletfrom sanctions on your
habitat, preventing youfrom trading, which, most of
these habitats probably won'tbe fully self sufficient.
So that could potentiallykill them if they don't start
to fall into line all theway to potentially maybe
even like a military action.
Lucas (24:26):
Yeah.
Which would be crazyto think about.
We, habitats.
They go up, they secede fromtheir governments, create their
own governments, then havedisputes with each other in
space, and then And go to war.
And then you just see ahabitat exploding just
like over the planet.
I feel like that wouldcause a lot of, dismay for
(24:47):
me, them going up there andseceding from countries.
I don't think that wouldbe an easy job either.
For them to just go upthere and be like, okay,
thanks for the resources.
and giving us a placeto build up our company,
but we're independent.
Jacob (24:59):
Yeah.
I think it could besimilar to how a colony
seceded from, like Britain.
A war.
Yeah, I guess that did.
There was some, not America.
There were some non Americancolonies that succeeded just
because over time it justbecame its own economic entity
and it just was no longerReally seen as a colony.
And, Britain ended upcutting them loose.
Lucas (25:21):
But that's at the mercy of Britain.
That is true.
Right now, these, we wouldalmost have to write in
an intergalactic law, thatyou could be, your own.
place, but you would have norights to build a military
weapons or anything like thatbecause you going up there
and Having wars in space aboveearth is not only dangerous
(25:42):
for the millions of peoplethat live on those Habitats,
but also the people ofearth because you're sending
huge habitats down We wouldhave to be a governing body
regardless because everythingthat they do would affect us
Jacob (25:53):
that is absolutely a fair point And it could
be also the case that eventhough these colonies or these
orbital habitats can say theysucceed or their, their own
economic entity, whomeverbuilds the first space force,
United States already has aUnited States space force.
Whoever builds the firstmilitary representation in
space might have the final say,you might say you're free, but
(26:13):
I have a bigger gun than you.
Lucas (26:14):
sometimes it's gotta be like that.
Like we just can't have,we can't have a marauder,
like a space habitat.
Cause that's what theydecided their government is.
Jacob (26:24):
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know how that'll work.
I do think though, it'llprobably follow the same pattern
we saw with colonization inthe 18, 17 to 18 hundreds up
until the modern day, whereeventually it just becomes too
much and it just, these becometheir own economic entity.
And over time they justdrift away from their
parent country until.
They succeed hopefully throughpolitics and not through war.
Lucas (26:47):
Right, which would be preferable.
But now let's saythat you succeed.
How do you decide whatyour borders are, right?
do you just pick?
Okay, I want thisquarter of the Sun.
I want Jupiter.
All right, becausewe live close to it.
Jacob (27:01):
I assume your borders are gonna be, just
be your space habitat.
Now you might have to fightfor specific Preferential
orbits, but space is big.
I don't really think thatwould be an issue either.
Lucas (27:11):
Yeah.
But then you're talking about,let's say that you have trade
routes set up and, there isno international government,
entity that polices outsideof those whose job is it if
the trade route is havingissues with either piracy or
something like that's one ofthem will have to take care
of it, but if it's in themiddle and there's no borders
claimed, Then, it'll just keepsaying, that's your problem.
(27:34):
That's your problem.
Jacob (27:35):
if you're imagining trying to pirate trades
going between two orbitalhabitats and earth's orbit,
for one, everyone's goingto see what's happening.
You can't hideanything in space.
it's very visible thatpiracy is going on.
So probably whichever habitatthese pirates are coming
from is going to face somesort of backlash from the
community as a whole, becausethey're affecting not just
(27:57):
the two habitats that are.
Trading with each other,but any debris they create
could junk up the orbit.
So they're also reallypissing off any other
habitat that also is usingthat same orbital space.
, tying back to what we weretalking about too, there might
be some inter coalitionalpolice force made up from
people that live in allsorts of these habitats.
A situation like thatprotecting trade routes
(28:18):
and stuff like that.
Lucas (28:19):
Yeah I definitely think that would be a great thing
I just feel like they shouldhave responsibility for a
certain amount of air spacethat would be around the habitat
Jacob (28:29):
Yeah There might be and almost might be like an
international water situationwhere you control a certain
volume of space around yourhabitat that Is considered
your space, maybe it'll be acase of, 500 meters from your
habitat is considered yourspace and anyone who violates
that, is subject to you.
I could see something like that
Lucas (28:46):
Okay.
So how do we maintain them?
the habitats, theyneed supplies.
Yes.
And supplies is very expensive.
If this is going to bea Commercial venture.
That means that peoplecan afford to pay for it.
Yes, So having something asexpensive as transporting
food, or water or, repairmaterials or medical supplies
up into these facilities.
(29:07):
I feel like might outweighthe possibility of people
being able to afford it.
Jacob (29:11):
that's working under the assumption you would be
transporting them up from Earth.
But once we have an orbitaleconomy, you wouldn't be
transporting them from Earth,you'd be transporting them
from other orbital habitats.
And in which case, it'sactually going to be cheaper.
Because it's, especially ifyou're taking from habitats
that are in a similar enoughorbit to you, it's really
cheap to ship stuff acrossspace versus even trucking it
(29:32):
across a country here on Earth.
So it wouldn't cost thatmuch money to import and
export things, and assumingthat they can also have
some sort of economic
Lucas (29:39):
output of themselves.
It will
Jacob (29:41):
actually be pretty cheap to do that.
it would be more expensiveto do it the further habitats
are away from each other.
If you have a habitat that'sin geostationary orbit, trying
to ship goods to a habitatthat's in low earth orbit,
there's a fairly large, it'scalled delta v, a change in
velocity that you have toinitiate to match those orbits.
But if you've got a bunch ofhabitats and low earth orbit.
(30:01):
the change in velocity, theDelta V between this habitats
is fairly low and it's prettycheap to transfer, goods
Lucas (30:06):
between them.
Okay.
So that's then saying thatthese habitats would be
able to get the raw materialand create the supplies.
By themselves and transportit amongst themselves having
a completely independenteconomy from Earth.
Jacob (30:20):
Yes, I think you could 100 percent have
and I think in many casesyou would have an orbital
economy that is independentfrom Earth because it is
so expensive to ship thingsup a gravity well, like we
discussed in our last episode.
I don't see you doing thatunless it's just something
that's insanely expensive.
So from earth, I think youwould, you could foresee
luxury goods being shipped up.
it's crazy cause it's heavy,but stuff like marble, it
(30:42):
would be really hard tomanufacture artificially.
It would be such a huge statussymbol on earth because of the
cost of shipping up the gravity.
Well, like luxury goodslike that would, and it
would be another one.
Although you could also growtrees on a orbital habitat.
So stuff like that.
Is what I could seebringing up from earth, but,
manufactured goods or foodstuff and stuff like that.
I actually foresee you justmanufacturing in orbit.
Lucas (31:03):
Okay.
Yeah.
So talking about like how wewould get food on these systems,
Talking about how an ecosystemwould be able to form and
we'd be able to maintain it.
I've been looking intoa lot about hydroponics,
hydroponics, essentially growingplants without soil, right?
Nutrient rich water that wecould run throughout these
(31:25):
systems to be able to createcrops and not just crops
that grow upright, how we'retraditionally used to, but
crops that are growing downfrom our walls or out of
bosses or in water that runsalong the walkways, however
you want to imagine it.
You could incorporate foodproduction into almost
anywhere on the habitats.
Jacob (31:44):
Oh yeah, anywhere where there's green space.
And in many ways,I think you would.
Because it looks nice.
People like having gardens.
Lucas (31:48):
Absolutely.
So let's say that we wantedto create a farm that could
support the amount of peoplethat would be on a habitat, like
you said, potentially millions.
I'm thinking, what wouldbe the most efficient
way of doing that?
Would we want to use sunlightor would we want to use
artificial light to create them?
Jacob (32:09):
I think probably artificial light, realistically,
no artificial light.
That's probably going to begenerated from solar collectors
somewhere else, or maybe if wehave fusion power, that's less
of an issue, but I think it'llprobably be artificial versus
trying to channel in sunlight.
Lucas (32:23):
Okay.
Now, I'm also thinking becauseif we are able to do it
efficiently, it might get to apoint to where we're trying to
grow crops on these stations,not just for the people that
are living on the stations, butwhat if we did it for earth?
Okay.
because earth, we're runningout of space, that more and
(32:43):
more people are living onhere and it's getting more
and more crowded in cities andwe're losing farmland every
year, to housing developments.
So there's been a concernthat we'll run out
of ways to grow food.
We've thought ofgrowing food in towers.
also using hydroponics, tobe able to grow the food.
But I think that if we couldutilize an orbital habitat to
(33:04):
sustain earth by growing allthe crops that it needs there,
I feel like that would be anefficient way of doing that.
Jacob (33:10):
I feel like we would explore vertical farming
on earth as an optionbefore farming in orbit and
shipping it down to earthjust because of the cost it
would take to deorbit it.
surely it would be cheaper togrow something in a skyscraper
on earth with artificiallighting versus growing it
in space and deorbiting it.
Lucas (33:28):
Yeah, I guess that's true.
I didn't really thinkabout having to deorbit it.
I almost just thought, you dropit out of the space or launch
it out of the space station,send it to earth with a.
A trajectory and thenlet it hit a parachute
once it enters orbit.
Jacob (33:43):
I guess one thing I could maybe see you doing to
make that a little more viable.
If you had an artificial farmin space, which I think, by
the way, for growing food inspace, even for the orbital
habitats in space, it's unlikelyhabitats are going to grow
food for themselves becausethat's just a waste of land.
I think you're gonnahave automatic farms that
grow food and Their wholebusiness is to export food
(34:04):
to these other habitats.
Almost like New York citydoesn't grow food for itself.
Like it's exportedfrom our rural area.
I think you'll see the samething with artificial habitats,
Lucas (34:11):
but it would still be using what technically a
habitat, but it would justbe like a floating farm.
Yeah.
That would then export goods
Jacob (34:19):
to other habitats where people actually live on it.
Cause you can make much betteruse of the land and you don't
have to worry about making itlook pretty or, be safe, but
what I'm thinking, If you'retalking about exporting food
to earth is, let's say you haveone of these artificial farms.
And it grows food andall that, and it wants to
shuttle food down to earth.
So if you can make a reallycheap, disposable capsule that
(34:40):
you can launch to earth and,it'll be safe for the landing,
potentially you could putthat on some sort of launching
system, like a railgun system,where it can accelerate it
really fast to kill all thatorbital velocity and send
it retrograde to earth so itcan just deorbit on its own.
Now, when you do that, it'salso going to push your
habitat in the other way.
And it's going to, Putmore energy into your
(35:00):
orbit is going to boostyou into a higher orbit.
So maybe you can also usethat to sell that orbital
trajectory or that energyyou're generating to boost
other habitats in the orbitor to launch ships the other
way, or to help maintain theorbits of the things as another
way to benefit from the energyyou're expending to launch
these capsules down to earth.
Lucas (35:18):
That's, it's a really interesting thought.
Just being able toharness that energy to.
to your advantage.
Yeah.
Jacob (35:24):
That way you're not just wasting it.
Cause if you just keep railgunning things down to earth,
eventually you're going toalter your orbit too much.
So you're going to have tosomehow cancel that out, or
you'll have to railgun thingsat different parts of your
orbit to cancel it out, or maybesell that, orbital velocity
somewhere else, use it to boostsatellites that are starting
to decay because anything inlow earth orbit, it's orbits
(35:45):
going to decay, so perhapsthat's a service you can sell.
Lucas (35:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
While it's alsosending your food down.
Yeah, exactly.
Way to
Jacob (35:52):
make, zero waste, right?
Try to benefit inevery way that you can.
Lucas (35:56):
Yeah.
I am.
I know when I was looking intoit, there was also, a huge
advantage to having that spacefarming though, would be.
being able to experiment andhave technological advancements
for planets that we think thatwe could colonize different
soil types, trying to exposeit to, different types of
(36:16):
ecosystems and gravities,things like that would be a
huge advantage for us movingforward with what we were trying
to do, as far as colonizing.
Jacob (36:24):
Okay.
So you're saying use theseorbital habitats as a test
bed to go ahead and experimentand find a system of
agriculture that works beforewe even get to a new colony.
Exactly.
Lucas (36:33):
Get all the guesswork out of it before you get there.
Jacob (36:36):
I could absolutely see that working.
yeah, that'd be really nice,especially if we're trying
to, utilize the regolithof Mars, for example.
And we want to find a wayto experiment with that.
That could be really goodto do in an orbital habitat.
You can simulatedifferent conditions.
You can simulate differentstages of terraforming and
figure out What kind oflife or what kind of plant
life we're going to needto make that could actually
survive on that soil and turnit into something useful.
(36:56):
That would 100 percentbe an interesting way we
could go about doing that.
Lucas (36:59):
Yeah.
and it would just beefficient for out there.
So if at the very least, ifwe can't grow plants for our
planet, we can figure outhow to grow plants on others.
Jacob (37:07):
Yeah, that would be really good.
I do like that.
The only way I could really seeyou wanting to, grow food in
orbit is going to be if it'scheaper to grow it in orbit
and de orbit it than it isgoing to be to grow on Earth.
And I think this will bepretty far into the future.
But one of the ways I couldsee that happening is if Earth
ever gets to a point whereland is just so expensive,
maybe it's like a whole planethas just turned into a city.
(37:30):
Or maybe, Due to ecologicalissues, growing food on earth
is so expensive that it couldbe better to grow it in space.
That's another alternativeI could see where space
farming could actuallymake a lot of sense.
yeah, I
Lucas (37:41):
mean it, I feel like there really are a lot of
benefits to growing, in space.
And the reason why atfirst I was thinking about
doing it on the habitats.
is because when astronautswere shown pictures of
fresh foods on the ISS, itactually increased their mood.
That's crazy.
you got to think you're outthere drinking out of a tube,
of Angus burger tube with theconsistency of toothpaste.
(38:06):
I would love to seea beautiful tomato.
Yeah, I would make my day.
Jacob (38:09):
Absolutely.
And I do think you're goingto have orbital habitats whose
entire Focus is on growing food.
And I think those are goingto, I think that's going to
be a whole economic nichein space is just grow food,
have a whole habitat thatall it is an orbital farm.
It grows food and it sendsthat food, adjacent habitats so
they can feed their populace.
Lucas (38:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
So where do you think that thesehabitats would go in the future?
What's the nextstep once we master.
Habitats around our own planet.
Jacob (38:36):
one of the things we're going to use these habitats
for is to colonize otherplanets, because I know there's
this idea in science fiction.
You see it all the time where wego to a new planet, we colonize
the planet, and then we buildthe orbital infrastructure
from there, but that's reallythe backwards way to do it,
and I don't think realistic,I think the more realistic way
we're going to see this happen.
Yeah.
Is let's say we want to colonizeMars or we want to colonize
(38:58):
Venus or even go to anothersolar system altogether.
We're going to arrive inspace and we're going to
build a orbital infrastructurearound that planet first,
which is going to consistof the space habitats, these
O'Neill cylinders, spacestations, and all of that.
Once we have establishedthe orbital infrastructure
around that planet.
We're then going to use thatorbital infrastructure to
(39:19):
aid the colonizing efforton the planet itself.
Whether it needs to beterraformed or not, whatever.
It's just, it's nice to havethat orbital infrastructure
as a safety net because youcan grow food in space and
ship it down to the colonistswhile they're trying to
figure out their farming.
there's not this notion thatcrops are going to fail and
they're all going to diebecause you already have
farms in space that cansupply you indefinitely.
And once you have that orbitalinfrastructure doing everything
(39:39):
else just gets so much cheaper.
Lucas (39:42):
thinking about it now and talking about it, it's like, why
even colonize a planet if you'reso efficient with the habitats,
it's so much easier to transportstuff and you're mastering,
how it spins and how everythinginteracts and interlocks with
every, you're on a perfectplanet where you don't have to
worry about natural disasters.
Jacob (40:00):
Perfect.
And every way you want, youcan, this can be exactly
how you want it to be.
You, the weather can be70 degrees and sunny every
day, all day, every day.
It can be perfect.
It can be cold and Arcticif that's what you want,
whatever you want, you canmake a habitat that has that.
Lucas (40:12):
Yeah.
So it's like, whyeven go through the.
Absolute horrible, endeavorthat it would be to colonize
and terraform a planet whenyou can just build your own.
Jacob (40:23):
I agree with that.
I think actually ashumanity goes forward, I
think more and more peopleare gonna live in space.
And I think as you take thatto the logical extreme with
time, the space populationwill eventually outnumber the
planetary populations becauseof what you're talking about.
It's just so much easier tobuild exactly what you want.
It's gonna be safer, I think,in the long run, and it's a
better use of resources because.
(40:44):
So if you were to disassemblea planet, for example, and turn
all of the planetary materialinto orbital habitats, you get
orders of magnitude more livingspace, because you can only
live on the surface area of aplanet, whereas if you use that
material, you basically canuse the whole volume of that
planet to make living space, andjust get, orders of magnitude
(41:05):
more livable area than youwill ever have on a planet.
Lucas (41:09):
that, That just seems like the logical step.
I've never thought of it thatway, but you know that just
Seems like that's what peoplewould do if we really did master
your habitats to the pointthat we're talking about today
Jacob (41:21):
I absolutely think that's what people are gonna do I think
we're gonna have more peopleliving in orbit of planets and
in orbit of Suns Then we aregonna have living on planets
and colonizing new planets.
So
Lucas (41:32):
then Now, I'm wondering, what are these
habitats running off of?
Would it be solar?
Jacob (41:37):
that is going to really depend on what
kind of energy technologywe have in the future.
Perhaps it'll be nuclear fusion,if we have, if we ever achieve
cheap and reliable fusion.
it could even be fission,or yeah, solar could
be a great example.
You could, incorporate these.
If you imagine, you could justtake these, cylinders, put
them in orbit around a star.
And then in addition tothese cylinders, you could
(41:58):
have solar collectors thatcollect that energy and feed
it back to the habitats thatpeople live on, and then that
could be the energy source.
So there's multiple avenuesyou could explore, and
it'll also probably changedepending on where you are,
putting these habitats.
So if you're putting themin the inner solar system,
Solar makes a lot more sense.
If you're putting them in theouter solar system, toward
where the gas giants are, maybesolar starts to make less sense.
(42:20):
And you start to lean moretowards something like a
fusion source of energy.
Lucas (42:22):
fusion, if we were able to get a reliable
fusion generator, I feel likethat would just be the best
option because you could.
You could have driftinghabitats, right?
that could have trajectoriesand they don't have to worry
about getting sunlight or, onesthat could orbit, planets or
stars that move very slowlyand they're out of the sun
for, five months at a time.
(42:43):
that's, it's just like whenyou think about it that way, if
we were to make them modular,you pull up with the, The
ring distributor, throw itout there and it opens up like
a transformer and you have ahabitat for a 10 million people.
Jacob (42:56):
Yeah.
I think that's similarto how we would do it.
You can also build a habitatand start linking them
together and make them aslong as you want it to be.
There's even a hypothetical,mega structure, which is
essentially a giant cylindricalhabitat that just is one habitat
that wraps around a star.
Lucas (43:09):
Yeah.
it's that, why not?
If you're thinking aboutit, just make them modular
and then we could colonizewherever we could get them to.
Jacob (43:16):
Yeah, I do believe that's where you're going
to get to an extent.
I wonder how modularthey would be.
Would it be almost likea modular home where you
change the countertops?
you pick, you're like,Oh, I want a mountain top.
I want a river that spiralsaround the cylinder.
what model?
Okay.
Yeah, that's not how Iwant the river, but that's
the model we'll take.
I want the model that has theocean in the middle, or maybe
a ring ocean in the middle.
Lucas (43:36):
I mean, why not?
Because if we have thetechnology to build these
living spaces and they're, 15kilometers across or whatever,
that's a lot of space.
Yes.
It's a humongous amount.
an ecosystem.
So might as well haveyour engineers design.
Preferential ones.
And then the peoplecan have their choice.
(43:56):
Yeah.
That's going to be
Jacob (43:56):
crazy to think about that.
if you do just go to themanufacturer and yeah, I
want one with mountains,let's see, what models do
you have, the showroom floor?
Have you ever seen, have youever read the Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy books?
Yeah.
There's the one scenewhere they bring them in
and it's all the differentplanets they're building.
And they're like, Oh,this is the whatever model
picked by the species.
Cause they wanted this.
And I wonder if it's gonna belike that with orbital habitats.
Lucas (44:18):
it definitely could be for the rich, right.
And the powerful us plebeianswill have to settle with
a lakeside house on, ringworld two, five, seven, where
it is, But, it definitelycould be like that.
the people who own thecompany and these people
that own all the othercompanies out there that
are doing this space mining.
they could have entire likecompany sections that they just
(44:41):
build out however they want.
Jacob (44:42):
Absolutely.
I could see that.
Maybe they're prettylike flat and not barren,
but not great either.
more like a field out in likethe middle of the United States.
It's just that.
Lucas (44:50):
And then a top golf.
Yeah, no, but, it reallyis interesting to think
about what we couldachieve if we could master.
Yes.
You can go
Jacob (45:00):
crazy with them.
you really could put like aring ocean in these that's
half a kilometer long,or even a kilometer long.
It goes around the whole orbit.
You can put yachtson that ocean.
You could have rivers, thesnake from one end cap to
the other of the cylinder.
you can really goall out with these.
There's skies to limit.
Lucas (45:16):
No, let's say that they're running efficiently.
These habitats are built torun for a hundred thousand
years or whatever, speculative,but now we're 60, 000
years in the future and thecreatures that are living in
that ocean that you built.
What are theygoing to look like?
Jacob (45:32):
Would they be affected at all?
That's a point Ididn't think about.
So presumably, it's still oneearth gravity and all that.
they're not, they'rein an ecosystem that's
similar to the, to earth.
That's not going to evolveinto be something crazy
and alien, but it isn'tisolated, ecological habitat.
So I do wonder over a longperiod of time, if we are going
to start seeing evolutionarydrift between species that
(45:53):
are all spread out throughthese habitats, because
I'm assuming you're goingto take that into account.
Fairly common Earth speciesthat we all know and love,
maybe, certain types of fish sothat people can enjoy fishing.
But if you put these on ahundred million different
habitats and let that goover the course of thousands
of years, yeah, they willeventually evolve to be
completely different species.
Not over thousands of years,but over hundreds of thousands
(46:13):
of millions of years.
That's a great question.
Lucas (46:16):
Yeah, I just think it would be interesting.
I'm trying to think aboutways that you could mess with
how gravity interacts withthe centripetal force of it.
Turning.
If you had a fish thatlearned that it could
swim slightly faster.
Going to the right, likeagainst the turn of it, or
it could do it going with it.
Either way, would therebe fish that evolved to
(46:38):
always swim to the right?
Regardless, cause they wouldend back up in the same point.
Yeah.
Jacob (46:43):
I don't think, if you can feel the difference in force,
then it's probably going to bea very uncomfortable habitat.
So I don't think there wouldbe, it'd be like trying to
run saying I run faster.
If I run in the directionof earth's rotation.
Lucas (46:53):
Yeah.
It's just, I don't know.
I feel like there, therewould be something in there
that would cause a differencein evolution, but maybe not.
Jacob (47:02):
it's going to be a completely artificial
controlled environment.
So it might be a case of youfind species of fish evolve
to feed closer to the waterfilters, maybe that keep the
oceans clean or the lakes clean.
there's got to be an inlet andan outlet port for these things.
So maybe there's whole newecological niches that open up
and these artificial areas orwe're interacting with these.
(47:22):
So I could potentially seethat happening for sure.
Lucas (47:25):
Okay.
Awesome.
Jacob (47:27):
Thank you so much for listening to the show.
We both sincerelyhope you enjoyed it.
You can keep up on thelatest news over on our
website at entropy rising.
com or join the conversation atour subreddit, Rising Entropy.
We release a new episodeevery other week, so
follow to stay in the loop.
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