Entropy Rising
Entropy Rising is a podcast where hosts Jacob and Lucas explore everything from today’s cutting-edge technology to futuristic concepts like Dyson spheres, discussing how these advancements will impact society. Dive into deep conversations about innovation, the future, and the societal shifts that come with the technology of tomorrow or the next thousand years.
Entropy Rising
O'Neill Cylinders: Life, Law, and Logistics in Orbit | Entropy Rising Episode 3
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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!
Website: https://www.entropy-rising.com/
Hello and welcome to Entropy Rising, where we talk about science and futurism. I'm your host, Jacob, and I'm here 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 have you here today.
Lucas:Happy to be here.
Jacob:All right. So let's jump into it today. I know we are going to be focusing solely on orbital habitation, specifically What life's going to look like when we live in earth's orbit, 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 excited about this one. I specifically want to talk about the idea of O'Neill cylinders. Are you familiar with O'Neill cylinders? I'm not too familiar with them. Really? I figured you would be all about them. So O'Neill cylinders are basically a type of cylindrical orbital habitat. And what makes it an O'Neill cylinder versus just, an orbital habitat is the size. So O'Neill cylinders are typically shown as being around two to four kilometers in radius or in diameter. And as long as you want them to be, but typically, between eight and 12 kilometers long. So they're these very large orbital habitats, and they give you a lot of living space, like an absolute ton of living space. And you can spin them up, and you can have whatever gravity you want, but you know, realistically, probably about one Earth gravity.
Lucas:Okay. So when you're living on a ship that is an O'Neill Cylinder, or an orbital habitat that has an O'Neill Cylinder, Where are you living on the ship? Is it on the rings?
Jacob:Yeah. So you're living on the interior surface of the cylinder. Okay. And when you spin it up, you're going to get artificial gravity. through, it's a fake force, but centrifugal force is what gives you the sensation of having gravity. So we can make, smaller, cylindrical habitats. We don't have to go as big as an O'Neill cylinder. And I think obviously our first gallivance into earth's orbit, we're probably not going to be making an O'Neill cylinder, but there is an advantage to making it that big, which is the larger in diameter you make this cylinder, 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 to rotate it to get the same amount of gravity.
Lucas:Okay.
Jacob:And at a certain point, if it's too small, there's actually a force imbalance between what you feel on your head and what you feel on your feet. I
Lucas:see.
Jacob: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 throwing a ball back and forth. And if it's shot from the perspective of the people on the merry go round, it looks like to them, you're throwing the ball straight, but it just magically veers off to the left. that's essentially what would happen if you lived on a really small orbital habitat is anytime you try to stand up you would feel this artificial force pushing you over to the side. And it can be really disorientating. So we really need to build these things fairly large. Not crazy. I think something along the lines of, 150 meters in radius and you can get up to about, spin it at about 2 RPM and still have a very comfortable gravity and people aren't going to feel sick on these. But bigger is better.
Lucas:150 meters. That's actually smaller than what I think. Oh,
Jacob:really? Yeah. Yeah. It's not so bad. You can go smaller. I think when I was doing the math, they predicted you could get as low as maybe 75 meters with one earth gravity. It will be uncomfortable, but a lot of the papers I was reading predict Most people could adapt to that fairly well, but, bigger than about 150 meters and you can just. throw your average person on that and they're just going to feel fine.
Lucas:Okay. Now let's say that we're throwing a person on that, but also, their house and their dog and all their kids right on the cylinder. And it's only 150 meters. you're looking up and you see your neighbors above you. So you're spitting
Jacob:150 meters is probably going to be More along the lines of what we see for something like a space hotel. This is going to be our first steps into space. Likely not going to be what we see for permanent space habitation. Now, when you're talking about throwing someone's family on there, these might be, the O'Neill cylinders. Something that's 2 3 kilometers in diameter. Or kilometers in radius. Now, the cool thing, the reason I keep mentioning 2 3 kilometers is that's That at that point, we can build that with modern technology. You can make something out of steel that's three to four kilometers in diameter, spin it fast enough for one earth gravity and not have a fly apart. Okay. Any bigger than that and you really start getting into needing something like carbon nanotubes or some fiction as material with a higher tensile strength than steel. But you do, you are absolutely right. even two to four kilometers in radius, you are still going to be able to look up and see your neighbor's yard or, see, On the other side of that cylinder.
Lucas:Yeah. It'll be just like, have you ever played halo? I have played halo. Yes. Just like looking up at 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:yeah. Halo is a ring world. And as far as we know, physically impossible to build, unless you have some super material that just, we don't have a, We can't conceptualize something like that, even carbon nanotubes in there, theoretically, as perfect as you make them would not be strong enough to build something like a halo. You would really need some beyond our current level of understanding of physics right now to a material strong enough to build something like a halo.
Lucas:Absolutely.
Jacob:But you are right. that is a problem. If you are living on one of these habitats, you could potentially look up. And see across the habitat because four kilometers isn't that far. You can see four kilometers on a nice sunny day if you stand on a building. So there may be our ways we can mitigate that. you're going to want an artificial sun and you're going to want some kind of artificial sky anyways. Now you will naturally get atmospheric haze and a bluing of the scattering of the light, but not to the same extent as Earth. So what we could potentially do is build a smaller cylinder inside of the larger cylinder, which would be, at the center of the cylinder you're going to have zero gravity. So maybe you could use that for some type of Zero gravity construction, if there's any manufacturing techniques that benefit in zero gravity, or maybe a control center, storage for anything, because it's not going to be affected by gravity. And then on the outside of that cylinder, you could potentially put screens and simulate a blue sky, and this would also Block people's view so that, you're not out in your yard and having someone on the other side of the cylinder look down at you. Yeah.
Lucas:Yeah. Yeah. That could definitely work now. If the screen was above those people, Creating the blue sky, but also blocking them. How did they receive the artificial light? Would it be from the lights above them?
Jacob:Yeah. Potentially. you could just have the screen represent the sun and be very bright. Okay, so a UV light that also represents a blue sky. Yeah, absolutely. you could 100 percent do that. theoretically, you could actually build several layers of this where maybe the sky is only 150 meters or so above it. And there's a screen there that simulates the sky. And it makes you feel like you're nice out and open. And with a four or five kilometer diameter cylinder, you're not going to, you're going to see some curvature, but it's not gonna be too crazy. So it might feel like you're out on earth.
Lucas:That definitely would be more efficient. Yeah. But what that makes me wonder is how did the people get on? If they were that close together, you wouldn't be able to land a ship to drop them off, right? What do you mean by that? Like you can't stop the cylinders from moving to put new passengers on.
Jacob: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'll have a zero gravity area. The only thing you'll really have to do is match the rotation of the cylinder, but for bigger cylinders like this, they're not rotating all that fast. So it's not gonna be so hard to land a ship in the center of these. Yeah. Okay. Which, I think a lot of people, when they imagine an O'Neill Cylinder, and if you check our website, the O'Neill Cylinder I put in the background there, It's like this metal ring, but because of micro asteroid strikes and orbital debris, you're probably going to want some type of shielding from you and your space. You want a nice thick wall of something. Absolutely. Now process metal can be expensive. So one of the ways you could do this is you could potentially. Build these orbital habitats into an asteroid and then you have a nice rocky surface keeping your habitat space and it just spins inside of a Mind out section of that asteroid and you potentially have an asteroid where the whole surface of the asteroid is just polka dotted with all these Orbital habitats for safety.
Lucas:That would be incredible. it's an interesting concept to avoid, damaging yourself and being able to provide protection for your habitats. Absolutely.
Jacob:Another one is you could have a non spinning outer shell. of this habitat. Okay. Now you could make that out of something like, metal, steel, or whatever, and that would absolutely work. But you could also just pile on leftover debris from a, maybe if you're bringing asteroids into one of the Lagrangian points of the Earth Moon orbit. When you're done with that, there's gonna be a lot of rubble left over. Maybe a profitable use of that extra rubble will be to use it to surround the orbital habitats and their non rotating shell, just to give you a nice thick shell of rock so that if there's a micrometeorite strike, it's not going to puncture your habitat and kill everybody.
Lucas:Just making space trash shields.
Jacob:Yeah, exactly. just use some type of adhesive, glue them all together on the outer side of your
Lucas:Elmer's glue out to make such an advanced habitat. I don't know. I feel like that would be a little ghetto. Yeah,
Jacob:but if it works. it makes use of all those leftover debris that would otherwise just be clogging up some of your orbit.
Lucas:So how would we hold a non orbiting shield that goes around an orbiting habitat?
Jacob:What do you mean? Non
Lucas:orbiting or non spinning? Sorry.
Jacob:Yeah. you could potentially just have two cylinder approach. You've got one cylinder that spins inside of an outer cylinder. Yeah. Maybe that's connected through a bearing. Maybe there's magnetic fields that hold it there. some type of mechanical connection. Or maybe it's just free floating. Maybe not free floating because then there's a risk they could drift into each other. But I think it would just be some type of connection where you have an outer spinning section or an outer non spinning section and then an inner spinning section.
Lucas:Okay. like how a globe, it could be fixed at those top and bottom points. Yeah, exactly. The outside would not spin, but the inside would. Yes, exactly. Okay. And do you think that space debris would be enough to make people feel safe to live on one of those habitats?
Jacob:yeah, you could potentially have, tens of meters of thick, solid stone between the outer wall of your habitat and space. you can go as crazy as you want. I could potentially see a group of people who are extra paranoid, even going further than that, having, half a kilometer thick. Stone surrounding their space habitat because they're just that paranoid or maybe it's a military installation. I don't know, but
Lucas:and they got the paranoia package. Yes, exactly. 30 feet of solid concrete. Yeah, you're fine.
Jacob:But then has rock outside of
Lucas:it. Yeah, we piled on extra rocks for you. No, that, that is super interesting. So going into, how you're thinking that they're built, is there any other challenges that we would face with these habitats in space?
Jacob:space debris would be a really big one. that would probably be one of the largest ones. Radiation would be another huge issue we're going to have with these, which also ties back into, you know, why you would want to maybe build them into an asteroid that's already there, or you would want to surround them with stone, like really thick stone, because that would also act as radiation shielding and just make it safer for people in terms of that as well. Those would be the two largest issues on the safety front.
Lucas:Awesome. So now let's talk a little bit about what it would be like, being up there in those cylinders. as far as let's say a more permanent residence, not just tourism. how do you think life would develop on? a spinning, cylinder type, floating habitat, or just on a traditional, a large deluxe ISS.
Jacob:I think the benefit of the spinning habitat versus the ISS is gravity. And another benefit is you can really make life be whatever you want it to be. Do you want to live in a huge city? If so, you can build that in one of these cylinders. You can have the population density of New York. you can make it as long as you want. So you can have more land area than New York, London, whatever city you want. And you can build skyscrapers and it would feel pretty much like you live in a giant city, right? You could have cars driving around, It could really feel just like on earth with maybe the only difference being there's a slight curvature off to the sides that you notice alternatively. You could make it almost like a nature preserve. It could be lush farmlands and full of trees with maybe a very low population density. I could even envision habitats where it's effectively almost like a national park where very few people live there except for some very wealthy patrons that maybe agree to abide by certain regulations to keep the lands pure and this cylindrical habitat may only have a handful of people who live on, lush, huge Country estates and then it might have a segregated area where there's some tourism going on to help fund the whole thing Or maybe it'll be solely funded by just really rich people who want to have all of this nice pristine untouched land
Lucas:Okay, what if it was like, like commercialized turned into something that could be used as like a research facility or you know the manufacturing of Luxury goods. Absolutely. You could do that.
Jacob:I think likely you would separate out your manufacturing facilities versus your living facilities Because why would you take up valuable living real estate, for manufacturing, your manufacturing buildings don't need to have a view you could really build like a if you needed gravity to manufacture something in space I could imagine a cylindrical habitat that has multiple layers to it. I mean you could do You know 50 60 layers that are 10 meters, You Dick. Yeah. And, 0. 5 kilometers. That's, you're going to have pretty sufficient gravity even in the lowest gravity of those layers. Because as you move toward the center of the habitat, gravity is going to get lower and lower. So you can't, build these layers all the way to the center. But maybe you could, maybe some manufacturing techniques we'll find will work better with lower gravity.
Lucas:Yeah. they would definitely be better for the manufacturing of, spaceships and their parts. that would probably be the start to how we got something going because we would need people to be living on them. Assuming that we're not using robots or AI yet.
Jacob:Yeah, I think that's actually the most likely case. Like what you just said. I think once we start building out our orbital economy, we're going to start building ships or we're going to find some other manufacturing techniques that are beneficial or it's better to do it in low gravity to the point of offsets the cost of doing it in orbit and shipping it to earth. And then naturally we're going to need people to live on these habitats. And you've seen the research that's came back from like the ISS. People really don't fare well living in zero gravity. There's all kinds of medical 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 feel stuffy all the time because the fluid distribution in your body gets messed up. So people are going to want to live in a gravity field or in artificial gravity. Even if the manufacturing itself is happening in zero gravity.
Lucas:Yeah, I absolutely agree. the zero gravity just brings a lot of stress on the mentally and physically on yourself and your, if you are bringing your family.
Jacob:Yeah, absolutely. So I definitely foresee a situation where, you could imagine there's this zero gravity construction yard building, maybe ships to go mine the outer solar system, like what we talked about last week, and they have a, some type of orbital habitat. adjacent to this that's spun up to give the workers artificial gravity whenever they're not working and stuff like that. Yeah. That's actually, that's how I foresee a lot of people moving from earth to orbit. Cause I think it's going to be very expensive to move from earth into an orbital habitat.
Lucas:Yeah, I would think so as well. maybe in the very beginning it would be cheaper because they need people. And you know, I don't want to be the first guy on the experimental orbital habitat. Absolutely.
Jacob:That's actually, that you bring that up is a good point, because I think a lot of people are going to be very scared of these habitats at first, because I think there's going to be this like pervasive psyche of what if something goes wrong, because everyone's going to be frightened of it.
Lucas:And then something will go wrong eventually, right? I
Jacob: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 hundred times safer than Earth, I think people are going to naturally be more afraid of living on them. I mean, flying is significantly safer than driving, but You very rarely see people who are afraid of driving, but I meet all kinds of people who are afraid of flying.
Lucas:Yeah, because you feel like if something does go wrong, there's nothing you can do to stop it. It's not in your control at all.
Jacob:Yeah, exactly. So I think that would also be, prevalent in the psyche of people who live on these habitats. And I think you could even see very harsh punishments for people who affect these habitats in any way, shape, or form. If you're seen as someone tampering with the habitat, there might be some fairly harsh punishments for that. Even if what you're doing is relatively harmless, but Just to prove a point, we don't take this at all.
Lucas:Yeah. that's how it would need to be. Cause you are talking about the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. You
Jacob:can potentially hold millions of people in these habitats, which
Lucas:is crazy. Cause
Jacob:like I said, you can make them have land area greater than New York city, greater than London 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 as big or small as you want. if you wanted a one family home that is, has one earth gravity, you could potentially just, build the home, put a tether on the top of it, put a big old counterweight on the other end of that tether and spin the whole thing up. So if you're really rich, maybe that's what you're going to have your own private, orbital reputation. Yeah. Yeah. And you can build them like rings. You can really go crazy with it. really the only thing we have to be mindful of is the radius. You can't go too small or they're just really uncomfortable.
Lucas:Now, when you sound comfortable, they'd still work.
Jacob:they would still
Lucas:work. You could, you would just listings left or right, depending on how it's spinning.
Jacob:Oh yeah, absolutely. You would feel very disorientated if you were on these, because the sensation to your feet, to your head would be very different. Make it give you very bad motion sickness.
Lucas:Got it. So I'd rather be
Jacob:dead. Yeah. It'd be like a torture chamber if you had a really small one.. Also, if it's too small, when you go to stand up, you might just get knocked over by the force imbalance.
Lucas:Yeah, you're essentially just a washing machine at that point. Yeah, exactly. Or a dryer. Yeah. Okay. Now, who do you think is going to be able to get up there first? Because I feel like, commercially, especially with SpaceX and everything that they're doing, and they're having some other companies come out and start developing ships that they are saying they want to use for commercial spaceflight. in the future, do you think that our government would invest at all into these orbital habitats or would it be entirely commercial? Because I think it might end up being almost entirely commercial.
Jacob:I think I agree with you., uh, government investing space travel is how it's always been done in the past. look at the ISS, but I do agree with you going forward. I do believe it will probably largely
Lucas:be commercial. Yeah. And now assuming that we will still need some type of government on these habitats, though. And, how do you think that would work?
Jacob:Yeah. So I think that in the beginning stages, it's going to be almost like How you see maritime law now where it's really almost a free for all there's some large wide sweeping General laws for the most part. It's every man for himself And I think every habitat is going to be allowed to essentially govern itself any way it sees fit and especially When companies are first building these habitats, it's probably just gonna fall under it's corporate Oversight of how they want to do it. My prediction is though, likely the actual laws governing what can and can't go on in these habitats is going to be based on whichever country, uh, the corporation that owns these habitats is based in, pretty much like how cruise ships work now, whatever your port of call is, is the laws that you follow. I see. I think that's how we'll probably see it in the beginning
Lucas:stages. That would make sense, right? Because the entire thing, I feel like you were saying earlier, but just start off as space hotels. Yes, exactly. nobody's going to go up there to live, first of all, it'll just be, I want to go and see space. I want to buy Elon Musk's ticket, right? To fly up there.
Jacob:Exactly. And I mean, there will be people who maybe don't live there, but in the same way that people live on cruise ships, right? Sign up to do like a stint of time.
Lucas: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 to think that it's, it would just be a giant floating cruise ship. Yeah, exactly.
Jacob:So there are some legislations in place. the outer space treaty is a famous one, right? And I, it's not that it's not worth talking about. But I'm willing to bet that thing just falls apart the minute money gets involved. it was made as a very idealistic piece of legislation that was made when people thought that there was no value to space. It's very easy to have these noble and lofty ideals of how you'll treat a piece of land if it's not worth anything. Same thing with space. So my prediction is that's not going to. Maybe in the beginning, early stages, but I don't think that'll really govern how we do things very much at all. But I do think as we get a little more advanced, we start building more and more of these habitats, more laws are going to be brought into question. Because what happens when you have your first group of people band together to build one of these habitats, and they don't want to be with any country? Or what happens when you have this orbital habitat, maybe that's based in some country that has less regulations, and they're using it as a way to commit crimes on countries that have more regulations, like a tax haven, or maybe they're, laundering money or doing all these, financial frauds against the U. S. or something, but they're based in another country, and they're located in space, or maybe they're not based in any country. They declared themselves their own unique thing.
Lucas: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 a few other things that would have to happen because, doing that nowadays, like you can't do that, right?
Jacob:that's actually a good point. you could definitely see a situation maybe where individual habitats operate almost like a city state. But a group of habitats might have a, almost like a city council where, or like some provisional government that overrules all of them, maybe not overrules. That might be a strong term, maybe similar, like the United nations that can set policies between all of them, trade agreement agreements and stuff like that.
Lucas:Yeah, that would definitely be interesting. it's just now, do you think all habitats would enter into that like city state mindset? My personal thought on
Jacob:this is that I think most habitats will work as their own entity. It'll be almost like a city state. It's a self contained government, especially once we get to a point where they separate themselves from the governments that originally launched them. Maybe if we have 10, 000 habitats orbiting Earth, I think they would mostly all work as their own self sustained government. And there might be all various types of different government in these. You could run the gauntlet of all the way from socialist, systems of government all the way down to like authoritarian systems of government. so you might pick a habitat to live on based on your political choice. I want to live in a socialist one, or I want to live in a free market, whatever habitat. Habitat of your choice. But I could also definitely foresee there having to be some sort of inter community police force. I don't know if you've ever read any of the Revelation Space books. So there's a subset of these books 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 it doesn't really police anything that happens on the habitat necessarily, but it can police what happens between the habitats.
Lucas:Okay.
Jacob:And I think you would have to run in that too, with between earth, because what if you have a habitat, right? That with all their waste products, which you're probably going to always generate waste products that you have to offload somewhere. And they're just throwing these into space, polluting the orbit, creating dangerous debris for those other habitats around them. There, you're going to need someone to step in and say, you can't do that. And maybe have sanctions. Prevent trade going from them to other habitats and stuff like that. I could 100 percent see there being some sort of extra governmental force
Lucas:like that. like a force that exposed or that enforces those universal laws amongst all the habitats.
Jacob:So there might be some sort of universal code of human rights that every habitat has to obey by, you might be able to have a, dictator type government in your habitat, but you still might have to follow these. fundamental basic laws that the community as a whole is settled on. So as long as you obey by those laws, you're good to go. Okay. And this also might include stuff like don't pollute the orbit. Don't create debris for others. And depending on how. Far, you break those laws. It might range the gauntlet from sanctions on your habitat, preventing you from trading, which, most of these habitats probably won't be fully self sufficient. So that could potentially kill them if they don't start to fall into line all the way to potentially maybe even like a military action.
Lucas:Yeah. Which would be crazy to think about. We, habitats. They go up, they secede from their governments, create their own governments, then have disputes with each other in space, and then And go to war. And then you just see a habitat exploding just like over the planet. I feel like that would cause a lot of, dismay for me, them going up there and seceding from countries. I don't think that would be an easy job either. For them to just go up there and be like, okay, thanks for the resources. and giving us a place to build up our company, but we're independent.
Jacob:Yeah. I think it could be similar to how a colony seceded from, like Britain. A war. Yeah, I guess that did. There was some, not America. There were some non American colonies that succeeded just because over time it just became its own economic entity and it just was no longer Really seen as a colony. And, Britain ended up cutting them loose.
Lucas:But that's at the mercy of Britain. That is true. Right now, these, we would almost have to write in an intergalactic law, that you could be, your own. place, but you would have no rights to build a military weapons or anything like that because you going up there and Having wars in space above earth is not only dangerous for the millions of people that live on those Habitats, but also the people of earth because you're sending huge habitats down We would have to be a governing body regardless because everything that they do would affect us
Jacob:that is absolutely a fair point And it could be also the case that even though these colonies or these orbital habitats can say they succeed or their, their own economic entity, whomever builds the first space force, United States already has a United States space force. Whoever builds the first military representation in space might have the final say, you might say you're free, but I have a bigger gun than you.
Lucas: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 they decided their government is.
Jacob:Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how that'll work. I do think though, it'll probably follow the same pattern we saw with colonization in the 18, 17 to 18 hundreds up until the modern day, where eventually it just becomes too much and it just, these become their own economic entity. And over time they just drift away from their parent country until. They succeed hopefully through politics and not through war.
Lucas:Right, which would be preferable. But now let's say that you succeed. How do you decide what your borders are, right? do you just pick? Okay, I want this quarter of the Sun. I want Jupiter. All right, because we live close to it.
Jacob:I assume your borders are gonna be, just be your space habitat. Now you might have to fight for specific Preferential orbits, but space is big. I don't really think that would be an issue either.
Lucas:Yeah. But then you're talking about, let's say that you have trade routes set up and, there is no international government, entity that polices outside of those whose job is it if the trade route is having issues with either piracy or something like that's one of them will have to take care of it, but if it's in the middle and there's no borders claimed, Then, it'll just keep saying, that's your problem. That's your problem.
Jacob:if you're imagining trying to pirate trades going between two orbital habitats and earth's orbit, for one, everyone's going to see what's happening. You can't hide anything in space. it's very visible that piracy is going on. So probably whichever habitat these pirates are coming from is going to face some sort of backlash from the community as a whole, because they're affecting not just the two habitats that are. Trading with each other, but any debris they create could junk up the orbit. So they're also really pissing off any other habitat that also is using that same orbital space., tying back to what we were talking about too, there might be some inter coalitional police force made up from people that live in all sorts of these habitats. A situation like that protecting trade routes and stuff like that.
Lucas:Yeah I definitely think that would be a great thing I just feel like they should have responsibility for a certain amount of air space that would be around the habitat
Jacob:Yeah There might be and almost might be like an international water situation where you control a certain volume of space around your habitat that Is considered your space, maybe it'll be a case of, 500 meters from your habitat is considered your space and anyone who violates that, is subject to you. I could see something like that
Lucas:Okay. So how do we maintain them? the habitats, they need supplies. Yes. And supplies is very expensive. If this is going to be a Commercial venture. That means that people can afford to pay for it. Yes, So having something as expensive as transporting food, or water or, repair materials or medical supplies up into these facilities. I feel like might outweigh the possibility of people being able to afford it.
Jacob:that's working under the assumption you would be transporting them up from Earth. But once we have an orbital economy, you wouldn't be transporting them from Earth, you'd be transporting them from other orbital habitats. And in which case, it's actually going to be cheaper. Because it's, especially if you're taking from habitats that are in a similar enough orbit to you, it's really cheap to ship stuff across space versus even trucking it across a country here on Earth. So it wouldn't cost that much money to import and export things, and assuming that they can also have some sort of economic
Lucas:output of themselves. It will
Jacob:actually be pretty cheap to do that. it would be more expensive to do it the further habitats are away from each other. If you have a habitat that's in geostationary orbit, trying to ship goods to a habitat that's in low earth orbit, there's a fairly large, it's called delta v, a change in velocity that you have to initiate to match those orbits. But if you've got a bunch of habitats and low earth orbit. the change in velocity, the Delta V between this habitats is fairly low and it's pretty cheap to transfer, goods
Lucas:between them. Okay. So that's then saying that these habitats would be able to get the raw material and create the supplies. By themselves and transport it amongst themselves having a completely independent economy from Earth.
Jacob:Yes, I think you could 100 percent have and I think in many cases you would have an orbital economy that is independent from Earth because it is so expensive to ship things up a gravity well, like we discussed in our last episode. I don't see you doing that unless it's just something that's insanely expensive. So from earth, I think you would, you could foresee luxury goods being shipped up. it's crazy cause it's heavy, but stuff like marble, it would be really hard to manufacture artificially. It would be such a huge status symbol on earth because of the cost of shipping up the gravity. Well, like luxury goods like that would, and it would be another one. Although you could also grow trees on a orbital habitat. So stuff like that. Is what I could see bringing up from earth, but, manufactured goods or food stuff and stuff like that. I actually foresee you just manufacturing in orbit.
Lucas:Okay. Yeah. So talking about like how we would get food on these systems, Talking about how an ecosystem would be able to form and we'd be able to maintain it. I've been looking into a lot about hydroponics, hydroponics, essentially growing plants without soil, right? Nutrient rich water that we could run throughout these systems to be able to create crops and not just crops that grow upright, how we're traditionally used to, but crops that are growing down from our walls or out of bosses or in water that runs along the walkways, however you want to imagine it. You could incorporate food production into almost anywhere on the habitats.
Jacob: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:Absolutely. So let's say that we wanted to create a farm that could support the amount of people that would be on a habitat, like you said, potentially millions. I'm thinking, what would be the most efficient way of doing that? Would we want to use sunlight or would we want to use artificial light to create them?
Jacob:I think probably artificial light, realistically, no artificial light. That's probably going to be generated from solar collectors somewhere else, or maybe if we have fusion power, that's less of an issue, but I think it'll probably be artificial versus trying to channel in sunlight.
Lucas:Okay. Now, I'm also thinking because if we are able to do it efficiently, it might get to a point to where we're trying to grow crops on these stations, not just for the people that are living on the stations, but what if we did it for earth? Okay. because earth, we're running out of space, that more and more people are living on here and it's getting more and more crowded in cities and we're losing farmland every year, to housing developments. So there's been a concern that we'll run out of ways to grow food. We've thought of growing food in towers. also using hydroponics, to be able to grow the food. But I think that if we could utilize an orbital habitat to sustain earth by growing all the crops that it needs there, I feel like that would be an efficient way of doing that.
Jacob:I feel like we would explore vertical farming on earth as an option before farming in orbit and shipping it down to earth just because of the cost it would take to deorbit it. surely it would be cheaper to grow something in a skyscraper on earth with artificial lighting versus growing it in space and deorbiting it.
Lucas:Yeah, I guess that's true. I didn't really think about having to deorbit it. I almost just thought, you drop it out of the space or launch it out of the space station, send it to earth with a. A trajectory and then let it hit a parachute once it enters orbit.
Jacob:I guess one thing I could maybe see you doing to make that a little more viable. If you had an artificial farm in space, which I think, by the way, for growing food in space, even for the orbital habitats in space, it's unlikely habitats are going to grow food for themselves because that's just a waste of land. I think you're gonna have automatic farms that grow food and Their whole business is to export food to these other habitats. Almost like New York city doesn't grow food for itself. Like it's exported from our rural area. I think you'll see the same thing with artificial habitats,
Lucas:but it would still be using what technically a habitat, but it would just be like a floating farm. Yeah. That would then export goods
Jacob:to other habitats where people actually live on it. Cause you can make much better use of the land and you don't have to worry about making it look pretty or, be safe, but what I'm thinking, If you're talking about exporting food to earth is, let's say you have one of these artificial farms. And it grows food and all that, and it wants to shuttle food down to earth. So if you can make a really cheap, disposable capsule that you can launch to earth and, it'll be safe for the landing, potentially you could put that on some sort of launching system, like a railgun system, where it can accelerate it really fast to kill all that orbital velocity and send it retrograde to earth so it can just deorbit on its own. Now, when you do that, it's also going to push your habitat in the other way. And it's going to, Put more energy into your orbit is going to boost you into a higher orbit. So maybe you can also use that to sell that orbital trajectory or that energy you're generating to boost other habitats in the orbit or to launch ships the other way, or to help maintain the orbits of the things as another way to benefit from the energy you're expending to launch these capsules down to earth.
Lucas:That's, it's a really interesting thought. Just being able to harness that energy to. to your advantage. Yeah.
Jacob:That way you're not just wasting it. Cause if you just keep rail gunning things down to earth, eventually you're going to alter your orbit too much. So you're going to have to somehow cancel that out, or you'll have to railgun things at different parts of your orbit to cancel it out, or maybe sell that, orbital velocity somewhere else, use it to boost satellites that are starting to decay because anything in low earth orbit, it's orbits going to decay, so perhaps that's a service you can sell.
Lucas:Yeah, absolutely. While it's also sending your food down. Yeah, exactly. Way to
Jacob:make, zero waste, right? Try to benefit in every way that you can.
Lucas:Yeah. I am. I know when I was looking into it, there was also, a huge advantage to having that space farming though, would be. being able to experiment and have technological advancements for planets that we think that we could colonize different soil types, trying to expose it to, different types of ecosystems and gravities, things like that would be a huge advantage for us moving forward with what we were trying to do, as far as colonizing.
Jacob:Okay. So you're saying use these orbital habitats as a test bed to go ahead and experiment and find a system of agriculture that works before we even get to a new colony. Exactly.
Lucas:Get all the guesswork out of it before you get there.
Jacob:I could absolutely see that working. yeah, that'd be really nice, especially if we're trying to, utilize the regolith of Mars, for example. And we want to find a way to experiment with that. That could be really good to do in an orbital habitat. You can simulate different conditions. You can simulate different stages of terraforming and figure out What kind of life or what kind of plant life we're going to need to make that could actually survive on that soil and turn it into something useful. That would 100 percent be an interesting way we could go about doing that.
Lucas:Yeah. and it would just be efficient for out there. So if at the very least, if we can't grow plants for our planet, we can figure out how to grow plants on others.
Jacob:Yeah, that would be really good. I do like that. The only way I could really see you wanting to, grow food in orbit is going to be if it's cheaper to grow it in orbit and de orbit it than it is going to be to grow on Earth. And I think this will be pretty far into the future. But one of the ways I could see that happening is if Earth ever gets to a point where land is just so expensive, maybe it's like a whole planet has just turned into a city. Or maybe, Due to ecological issues, growing food on earth is so expensive that it could be better to grow it in space. That's another alternative I could see where space farming could actually make a lot of sense. yeah, I
Lucas:mean it, I feel like there really are a lot of benefits to growing, in space. And the reason why at first I was thinking about doing it on the habitats. is because when astronauts were shown pictures of fresh foods on the ISS, it actually increased their mood. That's crazy. you got to think you're out there drinking out of a tube, of Angus burger tube with the consistency of toothpaste. I would love to see a beautiful tomato. Yeah, I would make my day.
Jacob:Absolutely. And I do think you're going to have orbital habitats whose entire Focus is on growing food. And I think those are going to, I think that's going to be a whole economic niche in space is just grow food, have a whole habitat that all it is an orbital farm. It grows food and it sends that food, adjacent habitats so they can feed their populace.
Lucas:Yeah, absolutely. So where do you think that these habitats would go in the future? What's the next step once we master. Habitats around our own planet.
Jacob:one of the things we're going to use these habitats for is to colonize other planets, because I know there's this idea in science fiction. You see it all the time where we go to a new planet, we colonize the planet, and then we build the orbital infrastructure from there, but that's really the 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 colonize Mars or we want to colonize Venus or even go to another solar system altogether. We're going to arrive in space and we're going to build a orbital infrastructure around that planet first, which is going to consist of the space habitats, these O'Neill cylinders, space stations, and all of that. Once we have established the orbital infrastructure around that planet. We're then going to use that orbital infrastructure to aid the colonizing effort on the planet itself. Whether it needs to be terraformed or not, whatever. It's just, it's nice to have that orbital infrastructure as a safety net because you can grow food in space and ship it down to the colonists while they're trying to figure out their farming. there's not this notion that crops are going to fail and they're all going to die because you already have farms in space that can supply you indefinitely. And once you have that orbital infrastructure doing everything else just gets so much cheaper.
Lucas:thinking about it now and talking about it, it's like, why even colonize a planet if you're so efficient with the habitats, it's so much easier to transport stuff and you're mastering, how it spins and how everything interacts and interlocks with every, you're on a perfect planet where you don't have to worry about natural disasters.
Jacob:Perfect. And every way you want, you can, this can be exactly how you want it to be. You, the weather can be 70 degrees and sunny every day, all day, every day. It can be perfect. It can be cold and Arctic if that's what you want, whatever you want, you can make a habitat that has that.
Lucas:Yeah. So it's like, why even go through the. Absolute horrible, endeavor that it would be to colonize and terraform a planet when you can just build your own.
Jacob:I agree with that. I think actually as humanity goes forward, I think more and more people are gonna live in space. And I think as you take that to the logical extreme with time, the space population will eventually outnumber the planetary populations because of what you're talking about. It's just so much easier to build exactly what you want. It's gonna be safer, I think, in the long run, and it's a better use of resources because. So if you were to disassemble a planet, for example, and turn all of the planetary material into orbital habitats, you get orders of magnitude more living space, because you can only live on the surface area of a planet, whereas if you use that material, you basically can use the whole volume of that planet to make living space, and just get, orders of magnitude more livable area than you will ever have on a planet.
Lucas:that, That just seems like the logical step. I've never thought of it that way, but you know that just Seems like that's what people would do if we really did master your habitats to the point that we're talking about today
Jacob:I absolutely think that's what people are gonna do I think we're gonna have more people living in orbit of planets and in orbit of Suns Then we are gonna have living on planets and colonizing new planets. So
Lucas:then Now, I'm wondering, what are these habitats running off of? Would it be solar?
Jacob:that is going to really depend on what kind of energy technology we 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 just take these, cylinders, put them in orbit around a star. And then in addition to these cylinders, you could have solar collectors that collect that energy and feed it back to the habitats that people live on, and then that could be the energy source. So there's multiple avenues you could explore, and it'll also probably change depending on where you are, putting these habitats. So if you're putting them in the inner solar system, Solar makes a lot more sense. If you're putting them in the outer solar system, toward where the gas giants are, maybe solar starts to make less sense. And you start to lean more towards something like a fusion source of energy.
Lucas:fusion, if we were able to get a reliable fusion generator, I feel like that would just be the best option because you could. You could have drifting habitats, right? that could have trajectories and they don't have to worry about getting sunlight or, ones that could orbit, planets or stars that move very slowly and they're out of the sun for, five months at a time. that's, it's just like when you think about it that way, if we were to make them modular, you pull up with the, The ring distributor, throw it out there and it opens up like a transformer and you have a habitat for a 10 million people.
Jacob:Yeah. I think that's similar to how we would do it. You can also build a habitat and start linking them together and make them as long as you want it to be. There's even a hypothetical, mega structure, which is essentially a giant cylindrical habitat that just is one habitat that wraps around a star.
Lucas:Yeah. it's that, why not? If you're thinking about it, just make them modular and then we could colonize wherever we could get them to.
Jacob:Yeah, I do believe that's where you're going to get to an extent. I wonder how modular they would be. Would it be almost like a modular home where you change the countertops? you pick, you're like, Oh, I want a mountain top. I want a river that spirals around the cylinder. what model? Okay. Yeah, that's not how I want the river, but that's the model we'll take. I want the model that has the ocean in the middle, or maybe a ring ocean in the middle.
Lucas:I mean, why not? Because if we have the technology to build these living spaces and they're, 15 kilometers across or whatever, that's a lot of space. Yes. It's a humongous amount. an ecosystem. So might as well have your engineers design. Preferential ones. And then the people can have their choice. Yeah. That's going to be
Jacob:crazy to think about that. if you do just go to the manufacturer and yeah, I want one with mountains, let's see, what models do you have, the showroom floor? Have you ever seen, have you ever read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books? Yeah. There's the one scene where they bring them in and it's all the different planets 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 be like that with orbital habitats.
Lucas:it definitely could be for the rich, right. And the powerful us plebeians will have to settle with a lakeside house on, ring world two, five, seven, where it is, But, it definitely could be like that. the people who own the company and these people that own all the other companies out there that are doing this space mining. they could have entire like company sections that they just build out however they want.
Jacob:Absolutely. I could see that. Maybe they're pretty like flat and not barren, but not great either. more like a field out in like the middle of the United States. It's just that.
Lucas:And then a top golf. Yeah, no, but, it really is interesting to think about what we could achieve if we could master. Yes. You can go
Jacob:crazy with them. you really could put like a ring ocean in these that's half a kilometer long, or even a kilometer long. It goes around the whole orbit. You can put yachts on that ocean. You could have rivers, the snake from one end cap to the other of the cylinder. you can really go all out with these. There's skies to limit.
Lucas:No, let's say that they're running efficiently. These habitats are built to run for a hundred thousand years or whatever, speculative, but now we're 60, 000 years in the future and the creatures that are living in that ocean that you built. What are they going to look like?
Jacob:Would they be affected at all? That's a point I didn't think about. So presumably, it's still one earth gravity and all that. they're not, they're in an ecosystem that's similar to the, to earth. That's not going to evolve into be something crazy and alien, but it isn't isolated, ecological habitat. So I do wonder over a long period of time, if we are going to start seeing evolutionary drift between species that are all spread out through these habitats, because I'm assuming you're going to take that into account. Fairly common Earth species that we all know and love, maybe, certain types of fish so that people can enjoy fishing. But if you put these on a hundred million different habitats and let that go over the course of thousands of years, yeah, they will eventually evolve to be completely different species. Not over thousands of years, but over hundreds of thousands of millions of years. That's a great question.
Lucas:Yeah, I just think it would be interesting. I'm trying to think about ways that you could mess with how gravity interacts with the centripetal force of it. Turning. If you had a fish that learned that it could swim slightly faster. Going to the right, like against the turn of it, or it could do it going with it. Either way, would there be fish that evolved to always swim to the right? Regardless, cause they would end back up in the same point. Yeah.
Jacob:I don't think, if you can feel the difference in force, then it's probably going to be a very uncomfortable habitat. So I don't think there would be, it'd be like trying to run saying I run faster. If I run in the direction of earth's rotation.
Lucas:Yeah. It's just, I don't know. I feel like there, there would be something in there that would cause a difference in evolution, but maybe not.
Jacob:it's going to be a completely artificial controlled environment. So it might be a case of you find species of fish evolve to feed closer to the water filters, maybe that keep the oceans clean or the lakes clean. there's got to be an inlet and an outlet port for these things. So maybe there's whole new ecological niches that open up and these artificial areas or we're interacting with these. So I could potentially see that happening for sure.
Lucas:Okay. Awesome.
Jacob:Thank you so much for listening to the show. We both sincerely hope you enjoyed it. You can keep up on the latest news over on our website at entropy rising. com or join the conversation at our subreddit, Rising Entropy. We release a new episode every other week, so follow to stay in the loop.
