08-17-2021, 09:22 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-17-2021, 09:24 PM by Rho Ophiuchi.)
Hello Todd,
Thank you for your quick and informative response - my next question is essentially the following: Even if the majority of people want to keep population low and standard of living high, would not that reduce the time in which the civilization could thrive? As an example, say I was one of a trillion people living in a system with a sun-like star at the center. As such, if I had access to one trillionth of the star's light, then I might simply opt to collect a large stockpile of antimatter and matter from the star using my energy allotment. In which case (if the star had ~5 billion years of life left), I would essentially have 6E+31 J of energy to work with. If I lived at a standard of living of, say, 6 MW, than that would get me 319 quadrillion years of life. If, on the other hand, I lived at 6 kW, that same energy would get me 319 quintillion years of life (while life at 6 MW might be more valuable than life at 6 kW, I doubt it is a thousand times more valuable). Thus, if "low population, high resources per capita" was the general mindset, I would still expect comparatively low energy usage - even to the point of the stars getting ripped apart for fuel, and then the system emitting mere petawatts of energy. That might just be me, though.
In any case, I would still find it surprising if not a single system went down the higher population path. A single late K-type star, for example, could reliably support a sextillion people at that energy level, and it would probably only take a single S1 to build and maintain a system like that (if my understanding of the setting is correct), and it would be surprising if something like that had not happened even once over the entire setting.
Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi
Edit: I just saw your edits, but if a sextillion could sustainably exist around a K-star, even if they were contained by everyone outside of the system, that would still drastically increase the population of the entire setting from the numbers I found in the EG.
Thank you for your quick and informative response - my next question is essentially the following: Even if the majority of people want to keep population low and standard of living high, would not that reduce the time in which the civilization could thrive? As an example, say I was one of a trillion people living in a system with a sun-like star at the center. As such, if I had access to one trillionth of the star's light, then I might simply opt to collect a large stockpile of antimatter and matter from the star using my energy allotment. In which case (if the star had ~5 billion years of life left), I would essentially have 6E+31 J of energy to work with. If I lived at a standard of living of, say, 6 MW, than that would get me 319 quadrillion years of life. If, on the other hand, I lived at 6 kW, that same energy would get me 319 quintillion years of life (while life at 6 MW might be more valuable than life at 6 kW, I doubt it is a thousand times more valuable). Thus, if "low population, high resources per capita" was the general mindset, I would still expect comparatively low energy usage - even to the point of the stars getting ripped apart for fuel, and then the system emitting mere petawatts of energy. That might just be me, though.
In any case, I would still find it surprising if not a single system went down the higher population path. A single late K-type star, for example, could reliably support a sextillion people at that energy level, and it would probably only take a single S1 to build and maintain a system like that (if my understanding of the setting is correct), and it would be surprising if something like that had not happened even once over the entire setting.
Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi
Edit: I just saw your edits, but if a sextillion could sustainably exist around a K-star, even if they were contained by everyone outside of the system, that would still drastically increase the population of the entire setting from the numbers I found in the EG.