Take LEO for example. It's a limited resource.

And if you just blunder into it willy nilly and go full colonial mode on it, you could lock yourself out by having just a little war or a lot of capitalism treating it as an externality. Either of which could lead to Kessler.

That would be one form of space based self limiting. You basically create the very trap that keeps you locked on your own planet.

And I get that the limitation doesn't have to be catastrophic. In fact, as a self aware species with a great deal of intelligence and the foreknowledge that actions have consequences, we or other civilizations could possibly make the adjustments necessary to prevent a catastrophic limitation.

But that requires going against the things that got you to that point in the first place (giving up conquering and colonialism to get you out of your biosphere deficit and embracing a lower energy, symbiotic lifestyle...though I'm not sure if that's even an option at this point...i like my lifestyle just as much as the next person).

So it's probably a really tricky spot for most civilizations that get to this point.

The self limiter is not a civilization. It's more or less just an extension of the same forces that balance out the biosphere that gave rise to us. I'm not sure how Kurtzgesagt described it but that's how I think of it.

And you do sort of see this self limitation all over the biosphere. Anytime a population exceeds the carrying capacity of its biosphere, hunger and disease, etc tend to self limit that population back down to the carrying capacity.

It's not really an active agent rather more an artifact of a limited biosphere. Technology kind of lets you ignore that for a time but essentially you're just building a bigger bust into the situation if you rely solely on technology to save the day. Temporarily.

Surely. It's all existential at that level.

But another way to think about it is that maybe the universal colonial self limiter is the reason that life here got a chance to evolve essentially on its own and without colonial interference.

If life randomly sprung up here and seems to be everywhere we look here no matter how harsh the environment, seems like that should also apply to the universe and all its large numbers.

Yeah but if the Kardeshev scale had any basis in reality wouldn't the universe be mostly colonized by now?

Smarter people than you and I have wondered about that. Many have put forth theories and what not. But one of them might be that what you need to dominate your biosphere is also the thing that limits you to that biosphere?

Sort of a universal self limiter on colonization...

What if one of the prerequisites to long term survival is the opposite of the conquer and explore everything at all costs mentality?

I think evolutionary pressures do tend to push you in that direction (edit: the conquer and explore everything mode). But I think space may be the point where the environment starts really pushing back hard on that mindset and maybe that's why the universe doesn't seem to be overcrowded with colonizers.

End what?

You can still explore it remotely. And for a fraction of the cost. And with none of the geopolitics associated with human settlement.

You get humans directly involved and then you have to get the military involved and then you get your first space war. And the you get trapped on the surface of the Earth by all the debris created by the first space war.

So honestly, I think some of this stuff is still worth debating.

The other thing to consider is that blind expansion in the animal world leads to massive die offs on a regular basis. Humans have brains that can predict these things.

We could choose to use them.

I guess my big thing about Artemis is that past history has shown that many of these big ticket space programs are a front for strategic military programs. I don't know why that would really change.

And Space Force has been talking a whole bunch about needing nuclear reactors in space and this sort of heavy lift vehicle would be perfect for that, as well as, any other super heavy military equipment they think they need up there.

I think at best we'll probably get a stunt landing out of the thing. I seriously doubt that we'll get any sort of long term human presence there beyond the stunt landings. Probably what we can count on getting out of all this is a more militarized space. Which counterintuitively makes it more dangerous for humans to go there.

I was trying to explain to you how you were wrong.

So you don't want to talk about starving people being relevant to an underlying state of doom and gloom?

Not surprising.

How many people are starving to death right at this very moment? Is that number projected to increase or decrease?

Didn't you try to say that it wouldn't be internal migration for some reason? I was just explaining that to you.

So when Florida goes underwater and we can't just lock out all the refugees at the border, all the Floridians are going to go where?

I don't know that it's really all that useful for the average Joe to spend a lot of time pondering all the doom and gloom. So I get the desire to ignore it or focus on other things.

But it is the reality.

Why wouldn't mass internal migration lead to pullbacks in pretty much all discretionary spending? Are you living in Elon's fantasy land?

Reality seems to be wallowing in doom and gloom. I get it if it's too much to face directly.

Because once mass migrations start, we're going to have to pull back on any grand space colony fantasies.

And the idea that the govt is going to actually foot the bill for a space colony seems kind of ludicrous. We can barely maintain the funding for ISS lol.

He's definitely made a mess of the space colonies being critical for humanity angle.

I just think it's kind of funny that he and the fans made such a big deal about saving humanity through space colonies but then got gigged by his own memery.

I'm just following Dear Leader Elon's lead.

Let's assume this moon colony actually happens. By the end of the century, decent chance that parts or all of the Cape could be underwater. Are we really going to need a moon colony at that point?

But the reality is that 99.9% chance that a moon colony never materializes and all we're left with is a big old giant heavy lift rocket for whomever to use for whatever purpose.

I mean don't have we have more important things like Twitter to save???

My theory is that mass holds space together on the local scale and it's mostly the space in between masses that's still expanding. Masses in this cases being galaxies and what not.

There was a period of time where everything everywhere expanded in every direction. So there was some compounding going on.

See also: inflation