High Pop Industrial Agricultural Garden worlds?

[atpollard]

Energy is clean fusion, you can extract raw materials from asteroids and the like.

Water dissolving and depositing soluble minerals to increase concentrations by MULTIPLE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE above their natural occurrence rates is vital to many mining operations ... that means strip mining "garden worlds" for those elements or asteroid mining 1,000,000 times the volume of ore for the same yield.

You are correct that burning fossil fuels would be insane at TL 9+ when they are so much more valuable as Plastics and drugs and Fusion provides a cheaper energy source ... but I lived along Lake Erie when it caught fire and Chemical Industries make bad neighbors. Industrial processes all "leak" to some degree.

 

[Krikkitone]

Water dissolving and depositing soluble minerals to increase concentrations by MULTIPLE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE above their natural occurrence rates is vital to many mining operations ... that means strip mining "garden worlds" for those elements or asteroid mining 1,000,000 times the volume of ore for the same yield.

You are correct that burning fossil fuels would be insane at TL 9+ when they are so much more valuable as Plastics and drugs and Fusion provides a cheaper energy source ... but I lived along Lake Erie when it caught fire and Chemical Industries make bad neighbors. Industrial processes all "leak" to some degree.

Also Fusion power isn’t waste free, plants have to be maintained and old Fusion power plant parts would be highly radioactive. As well as have all sorts of heavy metals.

 

[mike wightman]

Water dissolving and depositing soluble minerals to increase concentrations by MULTIPLE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE above their natural occurrence rates is vital to many mining operations ... that means strip mining "garden worlds" for those elements or asteroid mining 1,000,000 times the volume of ore for the same yield.

You are correct that burning fossil fuels would be insane at TL 9+ when they are so much more valuable as Plastics and drugs and Fusion provides a cheaper energy source ... but I lived along Lake Erie when it caught fire and Chemical Industries make bad neighbors. Industrial processes all "leak" to some degree.

The asteroids in our solar system are a more concentrated source by "MULTIPLE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE" than is found in the crust. Cheap fusion and m-drives makes asteroid harvesting trivial.
Cheap fusion allows for easy extraction for minerals dissolved in the oceans too.

 

[mike wightman]

Also Fusion power isn’t waste free, plants have to be maintained and old Fusion power plant parts would be highly radioactive. As well as have all sorts of heavy metals.

All of which is easily dealt with (Traveller fusion plants are not radioactive), throw it all in a fusion powered furnace and recycle the heavy metals.

 

[atpollard]

The asteroids in our solar system are a more concentrated source by "MULTIPLE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE" than is found in the crust. Cheap fusion and m-drives makes asteroid harvesting trivial.
Cheap fusion allows for easy extraction for minerals dissolved in the oceans too.

Try gathering Boron from Asteroids or Seawater.

 

[Krikkitone]

All of which is easily dealt with (Traveller fusion plants are not radioactive), throw it all in a fusion powered furnace and recycle the heavy metals.

But it’s even cheaper to just dump it/use a process with toxic waste to leach out the valuable minerals. (and that applies to all waste from all the different industrial processes, whether energy generation, old equipment, mining, refining, etc.)

It’s not that TL 9+ industry is polluting. It’s that Cheap industry is polluting. (and also cheap industry is the only good reason to put a billion+ people on a world they can’t breathe on)

 

[mike wightman]

Try gathering Boron from Asteroids or Seawater.

Boron is more abundant than Lithium in the solar system.

 

[kilemall]

Why would TL9+ industry cause any polution?
Energy is clean fusion, you can extract raw materials from asteroids and the like.

Metal shavings, microplastics in the water, chemicals, ozone from both ion emission and chemicals, human waste, etc.

 

[mike wightman]

All of which are filtered out thanks to unlimited fusion power.

Build all on planet manufacturing inside environmentally sealed caverns fusion tunneled into mountains.

 

[atpollard]

All of which are filtered out thanks to unlimited fusion power.

Build all on planet manufacturing inside environmentally sealed caverns fusion tunneled into mountains.

Making the world "Hi" in the Trade Code but not "Ind" since all that extra EFFORT and EXPENSE reduces production capacity and increases cost - thus denying the TRADE modifiers that go with the code of "Ind".

 

[mike wightman]

The effort and expense are trivial compared with the worth of the manufactured goods from the caverns.

 

[atpollard]

Boron is more abundant than Lithium in the solar system.

Global consumption of lithium in 2023 was estimated to be 180,000 tons (37,000 U.S. dollars per metric ton).
Approximately 5.7 million tons of boron were produced in 2016 in the world (3300 U.S. dollars per metric ton).

If you mine Boron from asteroids ... it will have a price and consumption closer to Lithium. The high availability and low price comes from the economic disaster of open pit mining (due to solubility and concentration in ancient deposits in Turkey and the USA).

 

[atpollard]

The effort and expense are trivial compared with the worth of the manufactured goods from the caverns.

The effort and expense will slow growth of industry and prevent the world from becoming an economic powerhouse in the first place. Worlds with factories on the surface will grow industrial capacity faster (because they can build factories faster) which will attract trade and wealth to pay for more factories and create the demand for more factories.

There is a reason China and India and Korea are the industrial exporting nations and the US and EU are not. The EU has exports and industry and meets its needs ... but China and India are geared towards mass Industry specifically for EXPORT. The ability to build at "environmental cost" is part of their advantage (as is the High Pop providing a large, poor labor force). Fusion tunneling to build a factory is slower than just "throw it up and get it producing because demand outstrips supply". That will cost you the market in a self-perpetuating cycle.

 

[whartung]

If not, we get a bunch of shamans together, and have them perform rain dances in each district.

Byzantine 7.3, a small rocky moon orbiting the larger gas giant, has the best shamans.

 

[mike wightman]

The effort and expense will slow growth of industry and prevent the world from becoming an economic powerhouse in the first place. Worlds with factories on the surface will grow industrial capacity faster (because they can build factories faster) which will attract trade and wealth to pay for more factories and create the demand for more factories.

Not once TL9 is achieved, you can begin to reverse the environmental impact of the previous TLs and use cheap fusion to work industrial magic.

There is a reason China and India and Korea are the industrial exporting nations and the US and EU are not. The EU has exports and industry and meets its needs ... but China and India are geared towards mass Industry specifically for EXPORT. The ability to build at "environmental cost" is part of their advantage (as is the High Pop providing a large, poor labor force). Fusion tunneling to build a factory is slower than just "throw it up and get it producing because demand outstrips supply". That will cost you the market in a self-perpetuating cycle.

How long will it take to cut the caverns using fusion tunneling compared with manufacturing the building materials to build the above ground factory?

 

[atpollard]

How long will it take to cut the caverns using fusion tunneling compared with manufacturing the building materials to build the above ground factory?

Fusion takes 10 years ... cheap, reliable Fusion is ALWAYS 10 years away.

 

[atpollard]

Just out of curiosity, on the subject of "fusion tunneling" a Gaia world to avoid pollution:

Hypothetically, I have the political and economic will to undertake the project. So we have 40 Billion people who need an (ULTRA CONSERVATIVE) 1 dTon of industrial volume per capita for an IND world classification. We happily "fusion tunnel" (whatever that process actually looks like) 40 billion dtons of rock ... 560 billion cubic meters ... 1,400,000,000,000 metric tons of rock. This rock is 88% Oxygen, silicon, iron and aluminum locked in strong chemical bonds forming granite-like minerals.

The actual volume needed is probably an order of magnitude or two higher (factories tend to be VOLUME hogs) ... the Boeing Main Assembly Building in Everett Washington is about 300 dTons per worker, not 1 dTon (it is actually about 900 dTons per worker per shift, but it has 3 shifts) - so 10 to 100 dTons per person is probably a realistic range for all the factory, transportation and warehouse needs of the underground Industry.​

So what exactly do we do with the material that came out of the holes that is not a pollution problem in its own right?

 

[Krikkitone]

The problem is we CAN do industry with low levels of pollutants. (and at TL 9 with arcologies & orbital cities 0). But reducing or eliminating pollution has a cost.

So the 3 billion pop world with TL C and atm 8 probably has an industrial output that is just fine. But X% of the output goes into protection of the environment. Certain cheaper options aren’t used, many native species WILL go extinct unless constantly protected. Essentially its a “Garden” world… nothing there is truly Wild because of the impact of all the people and everything they do. (although you can spend to minimize that impact)

But

If it is 5 billion people TL 12 and atm 7… Well, people have filter masks, but we aren’t going to provide filter masks for every living thing on the planet. So any pollutant that the filters take care of is just dumped, no need to clean it up at the factory. The industrial output of this world will be better, because nothing/ far less is spent keeping the atm breathable.

Sometimes, the cheapest & best output option is the cleanest one… then both worlds use it.
Sometimes, the cheapest & best output option is NOT the cleanest one (even if it is cleaner than the TL 8 option). Then the Ind world will use the cheapest & best output option. And the Hi (but not Ind) world will use one of the cleaner more expensive options (possibly including terraforming).

 

[atpollard]

So what exactly do we do with the material that came out of the holes that is not a pollution problem in its own right?

I googled the surface area of the earth and that excavation works out to about 0.5 inches (10 dTons per person) to 5 inches (100 dTons per person) spread evenly over the entire land area of the Earth. That is going to have an environmental impact.

 

[Spinward Flow]

That is going to have an environmental impact.

And there are people out there who cannot fathom (especially if paychecks are involved!) the notion of anthropogenic climate change.
{ shakes head }