🚀 go-pugleaf

In article uupcb@pcb.batpad.lgb.ca.us, mike.batchelor@pcb.batpad.lgb.ca.us (Mike Batchelor) writes:
> jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM (Jon Roland) writes:
> -> Strictly speaking, a large population and a high level of consumption
> -> are only problems if people do not live in such closed systems. Earth
> -> could support a million such starship-cities, each with a million
> -> inhabitants living in civilized comfort, for the next five billion
> -> years, without occupying more than one percent of the land surface,
> -> and none at all if they are built underground. The natural ecosystem
> -> could then be allowed to return to something like its original state,
> -> or even be restored. A limited number of people could still visit the
> -> wilderness -- under controlled conditions. The surface would not even
> -> be needed for food production. Food could be produced in factories.
> -> [...]
> ->
> -> Serious environmentalists need to be uniting to get the first of such
> -> cities designed and built while there is still time.
> 
> Where will the material to build 1,000,000 cites like this come from?
> Where will the materials to build the factories and support
> infrastructure come from?  Where will the technical know-how come from?
> What you suggest is not within our techonological capabilities, to say
> nothing of what is politically possible.
> 
> I doubt that we will be capable of constructing such self-sustaining
> cities within the next 200 years.  I suspect it will take a much longer
> time than that to convince any significant number of people to move
> there.
> 
> mIkE
> ----
> alternate: mike@batpad.lgb.ca.us
>                                                                                              


Actually, several megastructure cities are now being serious planned by some
Japanese firms. They do not quite meet my standards of self-sufficiency, but
could, with some modifications, go a long way in that direction. If there is
any interest, I will post some sources of information on these Japanese plans.

I estimate that to do the kind of city I want would take about 1 trillion
dollars ($US) for the first one, which would have a capacity of 1 million
persons. That sounds like a lot of money, and it is. About 2/3 of the world's
military budget. However, it is only about 3-4 times the cost of building a
modern city of comparable capacity, if we count not only the infrastructure
but all the capital needed to provide the inhabitants a livelihood.

However, we could build a good prototype that could endure for the next couple
of hundred years, for perhaps 200,000 persons, and it and others like it
might get us through the present political impasse. It would involve only a
little new technology -- similar to the kind being done for space habitats
and the Biosphere II project. It might be done for only about twice the cost
of conventional construction.

The payoff comes in reduced operating costs. Potentially two or three decimal
orders of magnitude less than present systems, using only existing technology,
and even greater savings with new technology that we can reasonably expect to
develop. No motor vehicles alone makes a big difference.

The most realistic plans for this kind of thing were done by George Dantzig
and Thomas Saaty in their book, _Compact City_, San Francisco: Freeman, 1973.
Much work has, of course, been done by Paolo Soleri and his people at the
Cosanti Foundation.

The materials required would actually be less than for conventional construction.
The main problem is to build the city as a single project rather than as a
mishmash of largely independent smaller projects.

Even going for the kind of ultimate starship-city I envision, we could afford
to build about one a year, each for about 1 million persons. After awhile,
they would be self-reproducing, requiring no additional external inputs of
labor or materials, generating more capacity faster than needed for the
natural increase of their own populations, so that they could begin to absorb
the populations left outside.

---

jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141