This is a post for World Population Day.
"If our species does not soon embrace this unique opportunity with sufficient commitment, it may miss its one and only chance to do so. Humanity could soon be overwhelmed by one or more of the many challenges it now faces. The window of opportunity is closing as fast as the population is increasing.... Our future will be either a Space Age or a Stone Age."
Arthur Woods and Marco Bernasconi, Space News, 1995 via http://spacequotes.com/"It may take endless wars and unbearable population pressure to force-feed a technology to the point where it can cope with space. In the universe, space travel may be the normal birth pangs of an otherwise dying race. A test. Some races pass, some fail."
Robert Heinlein, I Will Fear No Evil, 1970 via http://spacequotes.com/
These quotes, along with many others, show that overpopulation is another one of the flagship arguments for space habitation. But, this pillar supporting space habitation is flawed. While space habitation will alleviate the pressures of population by providing more resources to Earth and allowing humanity to expand, our rate of population growth is insane. The growth is so out of control that even if we had the best rockets and best manufacturing systems possible space habitation can not counter population growth...
"So imagine we are in 2058 and we can transport off-planet just as many people as the amount by which Earth's population would have grown. Doing so will merely stabilize the world population at about 10.8 billion - not necessarily a comfortable number.
It would be necessary to transport 108 million people off-planet every year. Assuming that by 2058 we are able to build and use colony ships that will hold 1000 people each, that means 108,000 such colony ships every year. That comes out to about 295 each and every day of the year - more than 12 every hour." ~Hard SF
This is problematic, but let's look at present day. Right now, our population is increase by 9000 every hour. This rate is still a problem. J. H. Fremlin said "At the current rate it would take only about 50 years to populate Venus, Mercury, Mars, the moon, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to same population density as Earth. . . It would take only about 200 years to fill [the remaining planets] "Earth-full." . . . What then? ."
I can not claim, that even in the best circumstances, that we can fill all planets "Earth-full". Sure, we can terraform a planet, but many of the planets will need artificial support to maintain an Earth like environment. Furthermore, we will have trouble achieving interstellar space flight in 50 years. The fact that we can fill our solar system in 50 years is unbelievable. If this is true, then we need a fundamental cultural change that will discourage childbirth. Space habitation is a massive effort and if that can't fix this problem after that much energy is spent nothing will, we can not keep creating the problem.
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Do these numbers seem reasonable? Am I failing to account for an increase in technology? How can we address this problem? Could you fit all those launches into launch windows?
