Colonizing Earth’s Orbit Is the First Real Step Into Space

We often talk about the future of space as if it starts on Mars, in the asteroid belt, or among the stars. Giant habitats and interstellar travel dominate the conversation. Those ideas are exciting, but they skip over a much closer and more practical question.

What happens first.

In this episode of Entropy Rising, we focus on the place where humanity is most likely to learn how to actually live in space: Earth’s orbit. This is not an episode about distant megastructures or speculative technology. It is about infrastructure, economics, and incentives. The groundwork that turns space from a destination into a place where people stay.

Earth’s orbit already matters more than most people realize. GPS, weather satellites, and global communications underpin modern civilization, and all of it exists because we built orbital infrastructure when launch costs were far higher than they are today. Those costs are not fixed. Reusable rockets have already driven them down by an order of magnitude, changing what is economically possible.

We explore what an orbital economy really looks like. Not science fiction trade empires, but a gradual buildup of industries that benefit from being in orbit. Tourism, satellite assembly and servicing, and manufacturing processes that only work in microgravity all appear early. Tourism in particular provides revenue and political momentum long before permanent colonies exist.

We also discuss the constraints that shape early space industry. Launching material from Earth remains expensive, pushing resource extraction toward the Moon and near Earth asteroids. Human biology drives stations toward artificial gravity sooner than many expect.

If humanity ever becomes a spacefaring civilization, it does not begin on Mars. It begins above Earth. This episode is about the step we keep skipping.

Transcript

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I think we're gonna see the first Space hotel in our lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the first. Spin gravity station in our lifetime probably won't be like a ring or any, like a no needle cylinder or anything. Probably just, uh, two habitats held together by a tether and spun up. But I do think we'll see that. Yeah, I mean, I, I do too. I hope that we will. Thank God. I hope I'm on it. Yeah, me too. Me too. Hello and welcome to Entropy Rising, a podcast all about science and futurism. I'm your host, Jacob, and as always, I'm joined with my wonderful co-host Lucas. Lucas, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, Jake. How are you doing? Always doing good. Uh, preparing for a historical winter storm that might be hitting the United States. Yeah, yeah. Which will be passed by the time anyone listens to this podcast, but That's right. Yep. You get back from France, you can get greeted with, uh, with a horrible winter blizzard. Yeah. So I guess we'll see you on the other side of the blizzard and hopefully it's not too bad, uh, by the time you're listening to this. Absolutely. So today I am quite excited. We're gonna be covering. The idea of colonizing essentially earth's orbit. You know, a lot of our episodes cover living in space and all of the benefits of space and building giant structures. I mean, our last episode was all about Ring worlds and uh, even scaling up to Niven rings that take up the entire orbital path of the earth. Uh, but something I don't think that we touch on a lot, and I think this might also be an issue for people who listen to our show is. You know, we see all the benefits of space and we think, yeah, obviously we're gonna go there. Mm-hmm. but we typically overlook how hard it is to take those first steps and build up that orbital infrastructure and actually start living in space. And then also we're, so, I think sometimes preoccupied with all the amazing places we can go and live, we don't think about what it's gonna be like to actually live in Earth's orbit. And so that's what I'm hoping to cover in today's episode. Yeah, I mean it's, it's definitely, um, a really good thing to think about because it, I mean, it's great to dream right about all these big things we can do in space, but the reality of it as humanity will need to take baby steps to getting there. And the first step to really setting that up is going to be establishing our orbital economy and making sure that we have a nice launching point to go from there to build out into the stars. Yeah, no, I mean, you hit the nail on the head and I think a great example of that As we often talk about the benefits of asteroid mining, I mean, there's so many materials in our asteroid belt and out in space, but those aren't really viable to get to unless you have a launching pad. In Earth's orbit, you know, it doesn't really make sense to try to build an asteroid mining, uh, setup. If you're launching it off the surface of Earth, you really do need that orbital infrastructure in place. And so that's gonna be the purpose of today's episode. We're gonna dive into what that early orbital infrastructure might look like. Mm-hmm. And how the funding might align to actually get us to those dreams. What the, what are those first steps gonna look like? I mean, it, it's super interesting to think about. I know a lot of people, you'll think like, how do we get up there right now? You know, we have government and corporation both putting in a lot of funding to getting us just like into space to explore. But, what we see most of it is the, like the satellite infrastructure that's being set up is going to be our first starting point that we're seeing currently. Um, so I feel like we should maybe start with that. No, I think you're absolutely right. Uh, something I've actually brought up when I've talked to people online about this through threads and whatnot is I, I'll talk about an orbital infrastructure and you know, someone's typically gonna be dismissive and be like, ah, that'll never exist. We can never have an orbital infrastructure spaces too expensive. But we already have an orbital infrastructure. I mean, there's a multi-billion dollar industry all around satellites, whether that's, Satellite communication. Mm-hmm. Uh, through starlink or internet or, uh, there's satellite TV providers, there's satellite phone connections. There's GPS satellites, there's satellites that monitor our planet for weather. So there's already quite a huge and lucrative industry in space right now that exist with the insanely high launch costs that we've had since, you know, the seventies and eighties. Yeah. And like I said before, it is important to know that all that industry is split still between government and corporate. Right. Which is a relatively new thing. Up until, what, 10, 15 years ago it was all government. Oh yeah. It was entirely because that's the only people that could afford it. But now with money being spread out more and more in the interest of going into space, being more and more, you see people buying into. Space. Yeah. Uh, through companies which, um, that, that are pushing up into there, which I, I want to like reiterate how big of a deal that is because 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago, if you had brought up the idea of private space enterprise and a lot of people would've laughed you off the stage, a lot of people would've said, that's impossible. Space is always gonna be something done by governments. There's just no way a corporation could ever afford that. And so this really is kind of a new branch and something that was thought. Many people, even impossible as short as 20, 25 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just crazy to see that, with backing like that, the advancements that can be made just based off of what people want to see and what is the most efficient, is really, really crazy. but talking about going into space and setting up that satellite infrastructure, I feel like our very first steps will just be making that cheaper. Yeah, I, I think so. You know, right now one of the biggest things that we've seen that's been driving the increase, investment in space is lowering the cost to get there. And that's obviously gonna be a huge thing and what's really been driving that. Recently has been creating reusable rockets. You know, I, I think everyone who studied space has probably seen this analogy, but if you had to build a 7 47 to fly it to Europe, and then you dismantled it. Flying would be too expensive forever. So reusable rockets really are the thing that's making space profitable, and I think that even in lieu of never developing anything better than rockets, let's say we never get orbital elevators or sky hooks or anything crazy like that, just getting reusable. Rockets could lower the launch cost enough to make space-based. Industry viable. Whether that's tourism, whether that's manufacturing or anything. Yeah. And like hearing that that being the first like step is exciting because we're doing that right now. We are currently building rockets that go up into space and come back. And if that is what we need, you know, our ship to return, our plane to fly back, to start the process of it being cheaper. Then we are already on course to developing an orderly economy. Yeah, absolutely. And that's only gonna get better. I genuinely think that we're gonna see reusable rockets become cheaper and cheaper, more reliable. And, we really are in the infancy of that right now. Yeah. I mean, when did SpaceX land their first rocket? It was maybe five, six years ago that the first booster landed and was relaunched as a fairly recent thing. Yeah. Very, very recent and, and groundbreaking, you know, when it happened. Yeah. And more companies are obviously trying to follow suit and developed their own, structures and their own ability to do this. I'm excited to see what ends up coming of this. And I, like I said, I'm just reiterating a point. I do think it's possible to build out our orbital infrastructure and to have humanity living in space with rocket technology. I don't think you need orbital elevators or any of these more farfetched technologies to make this happen. Yeah, and it's, uh, it's interesting, the analogy that you made earlier, it being a 7 47, it makes me not think of, because when I usually think of space, I'm thinking of the transfer of material into space to form the orbital economy. But, a lot of the time we don't think about tourism, right? We're flying people up there, people that just want to be in space, and that's something that is also happening right now. Uh, not nearly as often, but we are seeing people that are paying money to go up. You know, scrape space and come back down. I feel like that if you can make it cheaper and cheaper, that's something that so many people would be interested in. And I know that for a fact because I would be interested in that. No, I absolutely agree. I think, uh, Virgin Galactic, I wanna say their first flight was something around $200,000 a ticket. Mm-hmm. Which is obviously very expensive, but much cheaper than it costs to get a person in space back in the Apollo days by orders of magnitude. And I suspect we'll see orders of magnitude reduction of that in the future. I mean, if you can get one order of magnitude reduction, if you can go from $200,000 a ticket to.$20,000 a ticket. And especially if you can turn that into a, maybe a one week stay on a, a space station, then, you know, yes, that's expensive. I'm not gonna say that$20,000 is affordable and everyone's gonna be doing it. But I do think at that price point you would have people, who could do it. You would have everyday people that might be, a trip of a lifetime. You know, I could, I could see me saving up for that for my entire life as something I wanna do when I retire, for example. And I know many people who would probably try to do the same. I mean, that's a huge thing and it's maybe not something everyone would do, but I do think it would be, uh, enough people that you could actually Build a viable business around it. I mean, tourism is a multi-billion dollar industry, so it only takes a small cut of that to really be able to make it viable. Yeah, I mean imagine, you're starting the production of space stations, stations that will serve other purposes for you in the future, but to start off as being something that is, uh, easier to maintain. Um, they could be, like you said, essentially just space stations for, tourism and not, not luxury tourism, just people getting to experience space for a week. Yeah, You could have that set up and they, those would later be the living quarters for the people working in, in space manufacturing on those stations, but it gives these companies the incentive to start. Yeah. So I was actually thinking about it and I could definitely see there being a type of joint venture where. If you have a company that has some type of space-based manufacturing, right. Uh, to be clear, if you're gonna manufacture something in space, especially some of the first things we're gonna manufacture in space, these stations are probably gonna be zero G stations. Because realistically the only advantage to building something in space is zero G. Yeah. Right. Like that's the only condition we really can't replicate on Earth. So if you're gonna build it in space, it's probably gonna be something like Z Bland, that optical fiber cable that you and I were discussing before the show mm-hmm. That could speed up. Uh, fiber transmission, but, uh, because it's a crystalline form, it can really only be manufactured in a zero G environment. Yeah. Without imperfections. Yes, exactly. so the first things we're gonna manufacture are probably gonna be something like that that needs zero G manufacturing. The issue is, is that people don't do well in zero G. So if you want to have a crew to man the station, you have two options. Option A is that you have to rotate them on and off the station. kind of like we do with the ISS maybe in several month increments. Or option B is you have to build some type of rotating space habitat for them to live on, and then you could keep them in space longer. Option A is very expensive because getting people into space is expensive. Mm-hmm. Option B represents a larger upfront cost, but will save money over time and I could 100% see a manufacturing company maybe partnering with some type of tourist company to do a joint venture into building that habitation module so that they could have a couple of rooms dedicated to the workers so they can keep them in space longer, and then sell out the extra capacity to tourists to, uh, help make the venture pay for itself. Yeah. Yeah, because, uh, you gotta think just like business and everything else, uh, shareholders will want to see money coming in, as fast as possible, and that is very enticing. You know, the big holdback right now is, well there's a few. It's safety, efficiency, and then money, right? so we are already working on efficiency. with efficiency comes safety, right? But then money is always that big problem. But if you can promise people. money coming in and then big profits later, that pay off from that investment, then it makes it much more enticing for these corporations to build these structures around our orbit. Yeah, no, I fully agree. And what we're talking about, the types of industries that we're probably gonna see kick off our orbital economy, I do think tourism is gonna be one of the foundation ones. Mm-hmm. Because the beautiful thing about tourism is you can do it with very little infrastructure. arguably we're doing it now with virtually no infrastructure. We're flying people up to the edge of orbit with a space plane and charging 'em $200,000 a ticket, right? Yeah. So that can really scale wildly with your infrastructure from, you know, short trips on a space plane like we have now all the way up to prolonged stays with hotels. So I do think that's gonna be a foundation industry. things that I could see also scaling with it are. Like I mentioned with ze bland wires, things that need zero G to happen. You know, technologies that for whatever reason can't be manufactured on Earth. And I'm sure there's a couple that we're gonna see as we explore into our orbit. I mean, chemical reactions can be, uh, advantageous in zero G because you don't have separation based on density. Things mix more fluidly. They mix better. so that's something I could see happening. and then BI could also see maybe one of the first industries aside from tourism happening would be building satellites in space. I mean, satellites right now are very limited by how big in diameter the rocket is, right? You build the satellite bigger than the rocket, right? And so if you want a bigger satellite, you're outta luck. So if you could manufacture it in space, or even just have a basic facility to take pieces of satellites that are already in orbit and maybe degraded. Stripped into their base components and then reassemble new satellites for new customers. I could definitely see that being an industry that formed in space pretty early on, maybe even within the next decade or two. Yeah, and I mean, just imagine the efficiency that comes from that when you're able to produce, like you said before, the satellite can only be as big as the rocket. You have to imagine. That puts a lot of constraints on the abilities of these satellites, especially the ones that have to do with communication. Um, if we can build larger satellites to offer. You know, let's just say internet to people, uh, more broadly, then that cheapens internet for everybody down on the planet. The more efficient it is, right? The more money you save on those things. and then that's going to just push more companies to want to be better and better produce better satellites to, to better serve their people. So once one does it the rest follow? Yeah. We, we are in, a competitive. World when it comes to, companies also, also, um, in addition to those satellites, not just communication satellites, but space-based telescopes also. Those are very tricky to make.'cause they're very sensitive and they have to go through this insanely destructive rocket launch. And also they, they typically get better and you have better resolution with size. Uh, so that's an example of something that would probably be made. Wouldn't be surprised if that was one of the first satellites we made in space with some type of space-based telescope. Yeah, I mean, it would be actually, uh, you know, just great to see us go back to the root of why we really started going into space, which was just curiosity, absolutely. Exploration. Um, and that that's really what fuels, you know, most of our love for space. Um, it's not, you know, just like building up everything, but it's being able to go out there and, see stuff better. So Building those telescopes off world would be, an amazing progression in humanity. Yeah, absolutely. And then beyond that, you know, the next question is gonna be as we're in orbit is, okay. Uh, we have this foundation of our orbital economy going, but it's still very, no matter what, it's gonna be very expensive to get material off of Earth and into space. Mm-hmm. So obviously the next steps are gonna be trying to get resources to use in space from space. You know, we talk about asteroid mining a lot, and we talked about it in, I believe our, was it our first episode? It might have been, yeah. I think our first episode was Asteroid Mining, if not our first. It was our second, oh wait, was our first one? Electric cars? I think so. Yeah. No, I think we, we were combining episodes at the time, but that's not important either way. One of our first episodes we covered asteroid mining, so it's a very important part of this show. and in, like I said at the beginning of this episode, it's not something you're gonna do right away because it's very expensive and. Virtually impossible to do if you're still having to launch all of your equipment from Earth. But once you have that foundational infrastructure in space, it becomes a lot easier. And I suspect what we're first gonna start doing is harvesting resources either from the moon, you know, there are some metals available in the RLI from the moon, and we could potentially refine those, launch them in space, and use 'em for manufacturing or take advantage of near Earth asteroids. Uh, either transient asteroids that drift close to earth, and, you know, while we're here, we'll capture them and harvest them for material or just asteroids get stuck in points near earth. Yeah, I mean, um, it, it wouldn't make sense to like build up this infrastructure and then travel so far out to our asteroid belt to start mining. That's like when we are al already colonizing at like a. a solar system scale. Yeah. You pick the low hanging fruit first. Yes, of course. You know, and of course we don't wanna hollow out our moon, but it is filled with lots of resources that we can use to just start the production of, you know, like o new cylinders. Yeah. For example. Right. But we wanna start, Of course, once we have our orbital economy established and manufacturing is down, um, down to a pack, then we want to start, living up there more permanently. And that's how we expand out. but as far as manufacturing goes, uh, to start building all those things you need the metals. So we would take them, like you said, from asteroids that enter our orbit or from our moon, and we could just use those to build the first structures that will get us to branch out further. Yeah, no, absolutely. And like I said, I do think we're gonna take advantage of those near earth bodies, whether it's the moon or transient asteroids, because that just makes the most sense. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Now that's not to say there aren't gonna be some disadvantages with manufacturing in space. There are gonna be challenges, One of the biggest disadvantages, and God, how many times have I brought this up, is gonna be heat dissipation, right? Mm-hmm. If you're trying to do any type of large scale manufacturing in space, you're gonna generate a lot of heat and it's very hard to dissipate heat in space. You need massive radiators. It's by no means an unsolvable problem, definitely solvable. It's It's just a challenge you're gonna have to overcome. One way I could see around this is where the moon kind of comes in. I could see some manufacturing actually taking place on the moon instead of in orbit. Yes, you still have to then get the manufacturer thing off the moon. But with its one sixth earth gravity, that's much easier, especially because it has no atmosphere And being on the moon, you could potentially, you know, use the moon itself as a heat sink and, uh, take your heat and pump it straight into the ground, and that could be a way that you could dissipate heat faster if needed. Alternatively. Massive radiators also do the trick. Yeah. well you gotta think like, if we use the moon in that way, I would still consider that, like earth's orbital economy because oh percent, yeah. A lot of people see the moon as a satellite regardless, right? So it's just that you might just see, uh, these manufacturing plants all have massive heat sinks sticking into the moon as they produce products a little bit, uh, out of there. or you could just have like the radiator manufacturing happens on the moon, and then they send the radiators to the other manufacturing areas so that they can use them in that way. but yeah, no, I, I, I could definitely see that as being an, an issue, but a, a huge perk of manufacturing, especially if we're talking about in a vacuum, is welding. You can weld massive pieces of metal together. Um, just by there being no air pocket in between them, you've, uh, essentially put the metal together and it fuses instantly. Yes, you do have to prep the surface. If you clean off the oxide layer and have fresh metal, then yes, you can have that happen. You put two pieces of metal together and they, they weld themselves together. Mm-hmm. Advantage if that's what you want. It disadvantage if that's not what you want. Because there have been cases of, I think on, in the ISS where tools have gotten welded together by accident. Uh, so you gotta be careful with that one. That can go either way. Yeah. I mean, imagine you, you accidentally scraped like the, the surface of your door and you open it and touch the wall and Well, that's welded there now. Yeah. I mean, of course there would need to be precautions and somebody much smarter than me would think about, uh, ways to avoid that, hopefully. For those people, but it is a huge advantage that we could, uh, look into eventually That would save a lot of time in manufacturing massive things like Space Station. Yeah, I would have to look into it. I know that that's a phenomenon. So something I would actually be a little more curious to look into that I'm not a hundred percent sure on. But with traditional welding, something that can be challenging is to fully weld together two large contact areas and make sure that it's welded all the way through. So I'm wondering if with a cold welding like that, if that would be a way to actually get the whole surface welded together.'cause you don't have to worry about heat penetrating all the way through the piece. Yeah. I could definitely see that being an advantage. Mm-hmm. But after we start manufacturing things in space. And after we start harvesting resources from space, I think only naturally the next step is gonna be we're gonna start living in space. Yeah. So I'm curious, what do you think about humanity living in Earth orbit? And what do you think, how, how do you think that's gonna go? when I think of people being ready to finally live in Earth orbit, I feel like it's already time for them to kind of be ready to live not on earth orbit. Okay. If that makes sense. Like, uh, so if we have the means of building a sustainable station that can orbit earth. And can, uh, you know, function as its own thing. What is keeping it in the orbit of earth at that point? Uh, convenience. I mean, you're close to humanity. You're in earth magneto view that protects you from solar storms and a lot of solar radiation and in general, you know, it's kind of like, just because you can live outside the city doesn't mean you, you don't wanna live in the city, right? You're right close to the, the hub of humanity. I do see your point, yes, if you can build a space station that can live in earth orbit, you can put it anywhere. But, I will counter that and say. Even say you're probably gonna wanna live in ORs orbit, at least for the beginning stages. Yeah. Okay. I see that. It's just, I guess where my mind is at is that area around Earth is going to become incredibly valuable real estate for manufacturing companies that are, either pulling resources from Earth to manufacture something, or they're pulling resources from the moon or near earth asteroids, and then sending those resources down to earth. They're the going to be the ones that want essentially that spot, closest to Earth. Now I could definitely see early on people don't want to go too far away. Maybe, uh, like the hotels like we were talking about, those would be wonderful for having there.'cause you go up for a couple weeks, you enjoy space, you come back down. But if we're talking about living permanently, it's just in my mind, I feel like being a little bit further away from Earth just makes more sense.'cause you're not taking up that real estate. But. You brought up that magnetosphere thing. and like I, I definitely don't wanna get blown up by a rogue piece of metal just flying through space. but it's, uh, it, it definitely, to me feels like that area around earth and that orbit will be occupied. So, a couple of points, for one, it's really hard to just state how much space there is around earth. There's a huge amount of space. I don't really think you have to worry about running outta space. we have a big planet and you have to think the volume of area you have as you move further and further away becomes huge and earth's orbit, uh, even low earth orbit to medium earth orbit. I think there's plenty of space for people to be living and for manufacturers to be existing. Second point I would make is that if we actually use the earth itself as an example. Uh, you're talking about that real estate being very valuable, but arguably, uh, the most valuable real estate we have is always used for human occupation. You know, you don't see manufacturers happening in the middle of New York City, typically, they're all pushed off to the outskirts, right? In industrial zones. So it wouldn't surprise me if we saw the same thing here with the most valuable real estate. Being safe for human habitation and then manufacturing moving further away to, uh, you know, the less valuable real estate where it's cheaper. Another point is that actually moving around in space is relatively energy cheap. Uh, so whether you put your manufacturing in geosynchronous orbit or low earth orbit, uh, yes there's gonna be a difference energy needed to de-orbit that material to earth if that's what you decided to do with it. Mm-hmm. Um, it's not gonna be that huge. So I think the potential savings if, uh, that real estate was cheaper would be well worth it. Okay. So then with those points that you make, I would absolutely agree that because, if you could have the orbital habitats having such a nice big view of Earth, then that would be sold as super high quality real estate. Yeah, I think so too. And actually, so the interesting thing is if we're talking about what would make an orbital like real estate valuable, right? Because it's not like it's one place, it's a, you basically would be buying an orbital path. I think what would probably drive that value would be, how often does it eclipse with launch zones from different countries? So if you had an orbit that, uh, was very convenient, you know, it lined up with a bunch of different launch zones and it was very easy to, for example, leave from, you know, maybe Florida or Texas, uh, there's two launch zones there and it intersected those a lot. That would probably be a more valuable orbit than, you know, like a polar orbit. Uh, where you really have to wait for, uh, the earth to line up and then do a drastic chains of inclination once you're in orbit to match it. so that would probably be what drove value more than the distance to or from the earth. I mean, that, that would make a lot of sense because that gives you the ability to visit and, you know, uh, have people come, you know, family come see you or like, like if you're living up there and the availability of having like, Resources, sent there, right? But you would think that these orbiting habitats would already have everything that you would need on them. I would expect that as you, if we're living in space permanently, then you probably have a way to get everything you need from space. Uh, maybe some luxuries coming from Earth, but everything else would probably need to come from space. I don't necessarily think each individual habitat would be self-contained and able to manufacture everything. In the same way that no building in New York City is fully self-contained. Right. Uh, but I do think they could get the resources they need from other places in space. Uh, but for an example is I don't really expect habitats to, produce all the food they need for the people that live on them. Maybe they'll have some small gardens, like if you have an O'Neill in there, you might have some gardens and stuff.'cause that's nice and people enjoy that. You would probably have a fully separate orbital farm to grow the bulk of the food to support your population for a variety of reasons. Yeah. Yeah, that, that would make sense. So then to answer your question, yes, probably, um, the only thing that you would be moving from Earth is luxuries and people alright. But that is why you would think the value would go up, uh, orbiting around those zones. I suspect you would aim for, you know, convenient orbits. I mean, so for the ISS for example, it has a, a rather, inclined orbit. That way it can cross across a wide range of, countries. You can launch from Florida, from Moscow, uh, where have you and still very easily line up with that orbit, match it with your inclination. Uh, versus, you know, um, a more flat orbit around the equator. It'd be very hard to match that orbit from Moscow. You could still do it, mind you, just more energy intensive. Yeah. So that's what I'm thinking in terms of what would make an orbit valuable. Probably be, for whatever the space hubs of future earth in the being be. How much energy does it take to get from all the major hubs to your orbit? And that's probably gonna be a more valuable orbit, so to speak. Yeah, no, that, that definitely makes sense. Just, just thinking about, you know, as we progress as a civilization and branch out like the people who will get to orbit around Earth and spend their lives there compared to the people that are out there and Earth is just a little blue dot. You know, while they're living like that, I feel like would be a mu it's, it's like getting a view by the ocean and, and living in an apartment where you're just staring at some tubes out of your window. like it's, it's a big difference. Yeah, I could definitely see that. Being able to see humanity for itself. think about the expense. I know you love that book series. The Belters in that series are stated, most of them have never even seen the Earth. Yeah. So I can imagine that also being a big thing. Although something that the Expanse never really touched on that is a shame is, uh, is living in earth war. But I imagine, uh, you know, they have Luna and they have a huge population of the belt. I imagine there must be a huge orbital population in that world that's just never covered in any of the series. Yeah. I guess they, it's, it's, you see this in sci-fi a lot. It's just they, they kind of push past that point. Yeah. And they, they're already at the stuff that's more exciting. But that's why this episode has been so important, because we do that as well. Yeah. Right. We do really, we, we talk about all the exciting stuff. But this really is like, this is our first step into space where we don't take a step back. Yeah, absolutely. This, yeah. And I think this is more closer than it is further away, you know? Um, I, I think we're gonna see the first Space hotel in our lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the first. Spin gravity station in our lifetime probably won't be like a ring or any, like a no needle cylinder or anything. Probably just, uh, two habitats held together by a tether and spun up. But I do think we'll see that. Yeah, I mean, I, I do too. I hope that we will. Thank God. I hope I'm on it. Yeah, me too. Me too. It is going to be interesting seeing how governance of these, uh, space stations changed too because uh, you know, I suspect for the first. However many stations, it'll probably be fairly similar to, international law or international waters where you just assume the laws of whatever country you're incorporated in. You know, even if you're held by a privately owned company, uh, you'll probably just follow whatever laws that company is incorporated in. Yeah. That will create some interesting situations where. Just like with ships, right. They'll probably register them to, uh, whatever country has the best laws. I think like a lot of us ships are registered to the Philippines for that reason, if I'm not mistaken. Mm-hmm. so it will be interesting if we have, uh. Might find out that some random country, like, you know, the Philippines or , some Caribbean island has a majority of the space stations in, in the, uh, in the future. Uh, just for laws and benefits like that. Yeah. Laws and tax reasons. Yeah. Yeah. United States actually only has 10 space stations, but, uh, Bermuda has 500. Dude, we're Bermuda get all those resources from. Uh, but I do think though that over a long enough period of time, you. You are gonna have to change that mindset. I mean, once you start having multiple generations of people being born on these stations, living on these stations, dying on these stations, it won't really make sense for them to follow the laws of a country that they've never been to. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's like we've talked about before and like we've seen in the past when you create a colony, it's just like, just letting go and letting them dictate the way that they live is the best way to do it, because nobody knows it better than the people living it there. Right. So why would you follow the laws of a country on earth when you could, create laws specifically dictated for the way that you're living in space? Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, to make that even more complicated, even if, you know, countries didn't wanna let go of their space habitats or what have you. What happens when you have the first space habitat? It's built fully in space, so it was never part of any country. And then it's inhabited by people who were also only born in space. I mean, what, what country gets to control that? And this could be, I mean, mind you like this could be full of people who not only never lived on that country, but whatever country their ancestors lived on could have been thousands of different countries. So you won't even really have one strong claim. Yeah. This is all to say that I think at a certain point these space stations will become self-governing. Yeah, as they should. people whenever they're out, living and they, they form these, these new groups, they, they need to be able to govern themselves to be efficient, right? You cannot dictate. Over groups that are halfway across the planet. You cannot dictate over groups that are a million miles away in space. It it is, it is just not going to happen. Yeah. So I do agree with you. You probably, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being almost like city states right. Back in ancient Greece. That's what kind of comes to my mind when I think about these. Mm-hmm. And if you're talking about O'Neills funders about the right size they would have about the population of many Greek cities from antiquity. Yeah. I mean, I could definitely see that all spanning from a, a basic. Thought of the way to live, but having their own little different tweaks to it. Yeah. And there might be some universal laws that get applied to everyone. Right. You know, it might be, again, almost like maritime law, just because you're an international water, it doesn't mean you can do anything. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of overarching authority that had a broad jurisdiction of all these stations. It might not be able to say, Hey, this is the taxes you should pay. And, uh, this is, you know, the, the day-to-day laws you should follow. But it might be able to say, you know, Hey, you can't just throw junk out in your orbit because that could damage other stations and, you're not allowed to commit these capital crimes because that's just gonna be ruled as a, a universally agreed against law All of humanity, right? And they might have some authority to enforce that. I mean, even if they don't come onto your station and, and strip your people away, they might be able to quarantine your station. And if you're not able to trade with stations around you, I mean, that, that could potentially even be a death sentence. So that would be a very strong motivator to, to follow their rules. And if you've ever read any of the Revelation Space series by Alistair Reynolds, uh, they have a, orbital economy that exists, around Chasm City. And they have a whole chasm, city books that do it. Uh, and they have a police force called Panoply that basically works like this. They don't have any authority to come onto your station and, tell you your overall laws, but they have some very broad societal wide laws that everyone has to follow. And, and if you don't follow 'em, they'll cut you off on the rest of society. You might not survive that. Yeah. it would make sense to have something like that. is that, that way it's not like a country is trying to control you, but more they're just trying to keep in check, uh, the safety of, the orbital economy as a whole. sort of like, uh. Not, not really a police force, but more of an HOA. yeah. An orbital HOA. Yeah. That's funny. No, that is fair.'cause you know, especially with these orbitals and these orbital economies, you can't just have people throwing everything in space and potentially risking collisions for everyone else. Yeah. It's like, you know, get your garbage out of the orbit of station 4, 2, 9, or we're going to tax you. Yeah, absolutely. but yeah, and it would be something that's set up, by that everybody agrees on and that's not trying to run anything, just keep everybody safe to like an agreed terms. I feel like that is something that would be necessary. Yeah. It could even be a coalition where every single orbital could potentially pitch in, in terms of money through tax, but also maybe manpower, you know, use, send X amount of people to go participate in it. Mm-hmm. Or people can volunteer from every station. Really could be more like a, a universal coalition that keeps everyone in line. Yeah. You know, they bring coffee and donuts. You go Sunday morning, figure out what you're gonna do, you know, just like an HOA. Yeah. I think that's a good overview of some of the generalities behind this and how this could get started. what it might look like, uh, we didn't really cover specifically. What it might be like to live on one of these orbitals. But that's because we've done an episode on ane cylinders. Our last episode was on Ring Structures. So, uh, if you watch either of those episodes or listen to either of those episodes, I think that would give a good summary of what actually living on one of these would be. Like, needless say, it'd be fairly similar to Earth. Very, very comfortable. I think at least later terms, what you got past the, the initial stages of discomfort. Yeah. When you were small and new. I mean, you know, it'll be just like anything else. It'll start rugged. as it, but it'll turn into luxury later on. and yeah, we, we, I mean we covered everything from, from rugged mining stations to to, to luxury colony ships, um, you know, in our other episodes. So yeah, so check those out if you're interested in what it would actually be to live on these. And other than that, we of course appreciate you tuning in and listening to us. Uh, if you like what we're doing, then you should join us. Next week we're gonna be talking about. Planetary invasion and what it might look like if Earth tries to defend itself against alien invaders and even exploring what it would look like for two evenly match foes to go at it. Uh, I also wanna quickly say we very much appreciate our Patreon supporters. Uh, you make this show possible. You're helping us to grow and expand and, uh, you're helping us to achieve our goals and potentially increase our posting frequency. So yeah, if you like the show, consider supporting us. That's what keeps us ad free and those who already supporting us. Thank you so much. It means the world. Yeah. Thank you guys and never thought that we'd, uh, actually see so many of you. It's pretty incredible. It is. But uh, but yeah, thank you all so much and have a wonderful rest of your day. Take care. Bye-bye.