[cletus]

It is of course hard to predict 500 years out. Hell, it's hard to predict 20 years out. Did anyone really see the world of today even 20 years ago?

But I'll take my own fanciful stab.

I don't foresee either an energy or a climate crisis. There is a hard limit on how expensive energy gets because at some point you can turn totally renewable energy into a fuel of some sort, ideally taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to do it. It's not cost effective now because energy is so cheap. But like I said: there's a limit to how expensive it can get.

The bigger problem (IMHO) is going to be certain elements and metals that aren't so easily replaced. I agree with the author that getting certain elements from space is going to be economically tricky (rather than technologically tricky) compared to how cheap it is to pull stuff out of the ground.

You can recycle iron to a degree but a certain amount is lost through corrosion/rust. Rare earth elements are harder to replace.

I do foresee there being a lot less of us and that is probably going to be a traumatic change.

Sadly I don't foresee a huge presence in space. The energy costs, particularly when you look at even the most optimistic models of interstellar travel in particular, are just too extreme even with perfect mass-to-energy conversion.

Change like evolution is often perceived to be smooth but it's not. Our world like life itself is shaped by key, often small, events. Europe in 1914 was a powderkeg in 1914 but one man's death triggered a sequence of events that resulted in World War One, the armistice for which sowed the seeds for World War Two. One could argue that if the Archduke had lived something else would've triggered the war and you may well be right. Still how different might the world be if, say, JFK was killed by a chance bullet in World War Two?

As far as longevity goes, that's a tough one. I expect there'll be a certain class of people who live much better and longer than others but then again the history of the world thus far is those kinds of technological advancements always trickle down eventually. Living forever? I have my doubts.

Artificial intelligence as always is the sleeping giant of the future. I believe that to be inevitable and the effects could be profound to put it mildly.

I too believe the nation states of today mostly won't exist in 500 years.

[Tuna-Fish]

> The bigger problem (IMHO) is going to be certain elements and metals that aren't so easily replaced. I agree with the author that getting certain elements from space is going to be economically tricky (rather than technologically tricky) compared to how cheap it is to pull stuff out of the ground.

I don't think this is a real issue. Expensive metals are recycled extremely efficiently even today. This is only going to get easier as we go on.

> You can recycle iron to a degree but a certain amount is lost through corrosion/rust. Rare earth elements are harder to replace.

Iron is the metal that least needs recycling. There are deposits for essentially unlimited amounts at prices not absurdly higher than the present market conditions. Also, should energy get cheaper, iron would be greatly substituted with aluminium in construction. (And the aluminium supplies of the surface of the earth are essentially infinite.)

The talk about REE is largely misguided. REE are not rare. There are exploitable deposits pretty much in every country that's larger than Luxembourg and has exposed rock. The world deposits are greatly larger than any reasonable use we have for them.

The reason REE is in the news is that extracting it is an extremely dirty process, and if you want to do it in a first-world country, you have to pay very much to clean up after you. China captured nearly all of the world production not because they have a large share of a limited resource, but because they allowed miners to dump their separation waste in rivers. This makes REE extraction cost a fraction what it would be if you had to rebury all those unwanted heavy metals, and so the Chinese mines so depressed the market price that all the non-subsidized mines elsewhere in the world shut down. As the Chinese started restricting exports (which is only shrewd of them, considering the massive societal cost they bear of the cheap production), the market price rose again and mines elsewhere started to open. The Mountain pass mine is now finally entering large-scale production, and will very soon make the US a net exporter of REE.

[jabits]

Do you really feel that going all over the planet and turning the crust to sand is a viable long-term solution? Many mining engineer types and even geologists see no problem with this approach, but consider Appalachian coal: just because they can "put that mountain back together just as before", the result is far from the original. It's like the policy of "moving" wetlands to ease development in my area; almost looks ok, but the result is a local bio-disaster.

[losvedir]

> I don't foresee either an energy or a climate crisis. There is a hard limit on how expensive energy gets because at some point you can turn totally renewable energy into a fuel of some sort, ideally taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to do it. It's not cost effective now because energy is so cheap. But like I said: there's a limit to how expensive it can get.

I used to agree with you until I read this terribly thought-provoking article[1]. Now I'm not as sure. It was published by the Oil Drum, a blog I subscribe to for oil industry news, so the article doesn't have a hidden agenda.

The key insight I gleaned from it was the concept of the energy cost of energy sources.

I used to think that even if wind power wasn't as efficient as oil now, eventually oil prices would rise and wind would become a viable alternative.

However, what the article showed was that wind power itself uses oil in the manufacturing of the materials, shipping and construction of the wind mills, etc. You can think of the concept of the energy return on energy invested. And as the supply of oil dwindles and costs rise, that EROEI will change.

Oil at its start had an EROEI of 100:1, which means you could get a hundred barrels of oil for the cost of using one. Now it's at 20. Wind energy has an EROEI of about 20 over the lifetime of the equipment, but unfortunately costs a lot of energy up front, and only recoups that energy over time.

So the two issues the article raises is that as the cost of oil increases, it affects the EROEI of the renewable resources, and that because the majority of renewable resources all have upfront energy costs, they'll get hit extra hard. Politically, it will always make sense in the short term to cancel the renewable energy projects since you're using a great deal of the increasingly rare energy for payoffs in the future, when that energy could go to cost of living and make things better now.

I really think you'd enjoy the article if you read it, so I encourage you to do so. ("You", being cletus, wouldn't have posted this otherwise. You seem very smart and I've enjoyed your posts.)

[1] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8526

[wtracy]

The "energy trap" as described in the linked article would indeed be terribly troubling in a centrally planned economy. I'm still optimistic (for the moment) that there are private players who would cheerfully make those large investments today for a chance at owning a future slice of the energy pie.

[rpm4321]

I agree with most of your comments, with the exception of your concerns about continued material scarcity and human longevity.

Regarding material scarcity, I think space mining becomes a lot more economically viable once you have not only extraordinarily cheap energy, but also super light, super strong materials. Ralph Merkle talks about a diamondoid space shuttle (composed of perfectly arranged carbon atoms) weighing a few hundred pounds and getting to orbit with only a hundred dollars worth of fuel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdKyf8fsH6w

Also, people have been talking about space elevators forever, once we crack economically viable carbon nanotube production, reducing the cost to orbit by something like 99%.

Most importantly, when people talk about molecular manufacturing and molecular assemblers, they never seem to see the other side of the coin - molecular disassemblers - essentially "just in time" goods. When you can assemble and disassemble atoms at will, you essentially have programmable matter, and therefore you can do much more with less material.

As I mentioned below, you could also make the case that highly realistic VR systems would drastically reduce our demand for materials. After all, who needs to buy an actual Porsche when they can just close their eyes and have an experience much better than the real thing.

Regarding longevity, it seems to me that this is a cognitive bias because of the audacity of the idea, similar to the widespread skepticism towards human flight a hundred years ago. The idea is just so outlandish, and goes against thousands of years of philosophical and theological thought on accepting the inevitability of death, that people (myself included) instinctively recoil from it.

Assuming a 500 year time span - or even a 100 year one - and assuming that humans have developed the capability to manipulate matter at will, can scan and monitor the human body at extraordinarily high fidelity, model and simulate the body in great detail, and can experiment and iterate on those experiments at light speed with the aid of AI and neural interfaces - the death of death seems inevitable.

[Retric]

The problem with space mining when you look a the periodic table there is just not a lot of useful and rare elements. And all space mining is just extracting those elements so you need to have a gap that's worth the effort to go and collect even after LEO. When it comes to space mining think: Diamonds are carbon which is cheap. Even gold mostly just sits around, there is little point in increasing supply when so little of it is used. So yea, you might go and collect a few asteroids for some platinum etc but crossing the 1/10,000th of word GDP takes more than just a few useful elements.

PS: Outside of Fission or Fusion nothing ever actually runs out. Worst case, start mining dumps and river beds etc.

[rpm4321]

We are talking about a five hundred year time line. As I mentioned in my post, there will be massive reductions in the cost to orbit and back. Hell, we are already witnessing the very beginnings of this phenomenon with SpaceX.

Certainly in five hundred years time, and possibly just in a few decades, it will make about as much economic sense to import rare materials from orbit as it now does to import them from China.

Also, I'm making this argument primarily to counter concerns of material scarcity brought up by cletus. As I stated above, with this time span, I think we will likely have developed molecular assemblers and disassemblers, leading to essentially programmable matter and perfect recycling, which would lessen our need for materials.

You could also make the case that super realistic VR systems would drastically reduce our demand for materials. After all, who needs to buy an actual Porsche when they can just close their eyes and have an experience much better than the real thing.

[Retric]

There are two ways to look at this the way we do things now or the actual limits. For ideas based on now see: http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm

For limits see some quick math, you can probably mine down about 20 miles without getting to fancy in 2512 esp relative to a space elevator. Texas is 20 miles * 268,800 sq miles = 10^16 cubic meters. Platinum has an average rarity ~5 millionth of a gram per kg. aka 5 parts per billion which works out to ~10,000,000 cubic meters in the top 20 miles of Texas granted your playing with density's etc but 10,000,000 tons is reasonable estimate compared to around ~100 tons mined each year. Now we might be better off mining asteroids than Texas, don't assuming we need to leave the planet any time soon.

PS: It may be a mainstay of sci-fi, but there is little actual evidence that asteroids are going to have particularly high levels of any of the really rare stuff. (other than H3)

[schiffern]

>PS: It may be a mainstay of sci-fi, but there is little actual evidence that asteroids are going to have particularly high levels of any of the really rare stuff. (other than H3)

Untrue. Iridium is the rarest element in the Earth's crust. The majority of the known deposites come from asteroids.

It's not just Iridium, either. Compare these two charts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elemental_abundances.svg and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SolarSystemAbundances.png

Why are they so different? Basically all the heavy and iron-loving stuff sank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_differentiation

[kens]

I was puzzled by this, since obviously there are elements that are more rare than iridium, so I checked the original data source. They eliminate most radioactive elements which kind of makes sense. I was a bit surprised to learn that polonium and radium are less common in the crust than iridium. They also eliminate noble gases from the list, of which krypton, xenon, and radon turn out to be rarer in the crust than iridium. Also a couple sources have rhenium rarer than iridium.

(I'm not trying to be pedantic and start an argument, but just fill in some information in case anyone else wondered about this data.)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundances_of_the_elements_(dat... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earths...

[rpm4321]

It seems like we are having two different arguments. My main point here has been that material scarcity will likely be a non-factor in the future. You seem to be in agreement with that point, but seem dead set against the practicality of space mining.

Throughout my comments I've maintained that molecular assemblers/disassemblers (and possibly VR) should drastically lessen the amount of materials we consume. I'm simply saying that if we do run into scarcity issues, worst case, space mining should be many, many orders of magnitude cheaper within this time span.

Right now the US goes to the expense of floating rare earth elements on freighters from halfway across the globe, simply because we don't want to deal with the pollution, real property rights, safety issues, regulatory issues, and eyesores resulting from US mining operations. With the expected reductions in cost to achieve orbit, in 2112 the asteroid belt could very easily be the new China.

Now you could argue that the same breakthroughs that allow cheaper space mining would allow us to cleanly and efficiently extract resources in greater number from the earth - "molecular mining", if you will. That may be the case, but it's really impossible to predict to that degree of specificity at this point in time. We're probably arguing over what in the future would be the equivalent of going to the Walmart down the block or the Target across town to get a package of batteries. It probably doesn't matter.

Besides, the amount of materials we need really depends on how ambitious humanity wants to get:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain

[Someone]

" getting certain elements from space is going to be economically tricky (rather than technologically tricky) compared to how cheap it is to pull stuff out of the ground"

That completely changes when you want to use those elements in space, rather than on earth. I think that could be the more normal thing to do; if we go to space, it will be to stay there. Why lift stuff out of earth's gravitation well that you can get from the arteries belt?

[guard-of-terra]

Maybe we'll figure we can replace all elements with some configuration of carbon atoms.

[MrScruff]

The bigger problem (IMHO) is going to be certain elements and metals that aren't so easily replaced. I agree with the author that getting certain elements from space is going to be economically tricky (rather than technologically tricky) compared to how cheap it is to pull stuff out of the ground.

I'm not convinced that 'economically tricky' will mean anything in 500 years. Assuming that we have essentially unlimited free energy, and AI capable of autonomously handling things like building, manufacturing and farming (which doesn't necessarily require strong AI), the cost of everything will ultimately head towards zero, surely?

[cletus]

"Free energy" is a misnomer. There is the cost of fuel and the cost of what produces the energy (capital, maintenance, land, labour, etc costs).

The attraction of fusion is "free energy" in that hydrogen is plentiful (even deuterium is plentiful, tritium less so). Helium is not unlimited at least here on Earth and we're busy pissing away our supply on party balloons thanks to a US government decision to sell its strategic reserve in the 90s.

But a fusion plant is expensive. It costs money for the raw materials and the labour to build and maintain it such that the energy it produces--if it ever becomes economically viable, which is far from certain--will not be "free".

Computing power might be cheap but it's not free. An AI/robot won't be "free" in the same sense either. They'll cost money to build. Those resources will cost money.

Also, not all energy is the same. Plants that power the electrical grid are one thing. The energy required to hurtle a large metal object into space is something else. Fusion might work quite well for infrastructure but will it be made to work where we currently use kerosene and oxygen? That vehicle too costs money.

[MrScruff]

Sure, I get all that. But we're talking about 500 years hence. I just don't believe that the costs you're listing should be relevant in that time frame. If you have AI that is 500 years more advanced, you're effectively removing human involvement in things like mining raw materials, maintaining and building plants. No singularity required.

The cost of mining raw materials goes to zero if we can build a machine that can build other machines that can autonomously space mine.

The cost of producing energy goes to zero if we can build machines that can build and maintain energy plants.

I would be surprised if much of this hadn't occurred within 200 years, let alone 500.

[barrkel]

I agree with you, and that's how I see it working too. And the capitalist system won't work in that setup; it would naturally lead to a single person at the apex owning all the capital (self-reproducing capital => whoever has the best growth function dominates in inverse exponential time), and all the rest of us either being servants or information workers (since everything physical can trivially be done by machines).

Add in strong AI, and you remove the need for information workers; we'd all be servants in the employ of a single CEO at the apex; or servants to other servants; or prostitutes, or some other power relation not reproducible from machines because of wanting the authenticity of a person. I don't see such a state as stable (certainly not in a democracy), and if it existed tomorrow, there would be a revolution. But of course the transition will be gradual, so there won't be a revolution; but something post-capitalist, post-scarcity, will need to emerge to stop blood flowing.

[Tuna-Fish]

> There is the cost of fuel

The cost of the raw material used to make fuel is absolutely trivial in all nuclear power plants. The market price of uranium would have to increase by more than three orders of magnitude to increase the cost of produced electricity by 10%. At that point, we have unlimited supplies in seawater.

The capital costs of power plants have trended up as safety and monitoring requirements have risen. Given sufficient automation, AI, and simpler and fundamentally more safe designs (which do not need as much active safety), these costs can probably be brought down.

[waqf]

We'll always be able to find something which is still expensive. And everything has scaling limits. For example our "essentially unlimited" energy source might give us enough to power a 21st-century lifestyle essentially free, but might still be prohibitively expensive when you try to use it for intergalactic travel, or for running computer simulations of googols of universes.