By
Rick Austinson
The Model for an Industrialized World
The journey from an agrarian society to an Industrialized World is long and fraught with many obstacles. Any civilization that has reached an agrarian level will continue to grow, and the quest for space, food, and power will eventually push them down this path.
The primary obstacle to becoming an industrialized world is power. This does not necessarily mean electrical power, but simple productive energy. However, any civilization on the path to becoming an industrialized world will eventually require electrical energy, so any civilization that has not yet harnessed the power of electricity is considered to be at Stage 0.
The road to becoming an Industrialized world is long, but like any journey it starts with a single step. The first step is devising the most basic means to produce enough electrical energy to support industry.
Stage 1:
Stage one is the invention of the Steam Turbine. With the exception of hydro-electrical plants, every form of power generation capable of with staining a population is essentially a derivation of the Steam turbine.
Coal Power Plants: coal or oil burning plants simply burn combustibles to boil water to generate steam to drive a turbine to generate power.
Nuclear Power Plants: as complex as a nuclear reactor may sound, it is actually surprisingly simple. A nuclear plant harnesses the power being given off by radioactive isotopes in the form of heat to boil water to generate steam to drive a turbine to generate electrical power.
Solar power Plants: a solar plant on the surface does not appear to be a steam engine, but the kinds of plants that actually generate enough power to support civilization are. The sue mirrors to focus the sun’s rays on columns of molten salt which transfers heat used to boil water to create steam to drive a turbine to generate electrical power.
Therefore the first stage along the path to becoming an industrialized world is the invention of the steam turbine to generate power.
Stage 2:
The second stage in the road to becoming an industrialized world is the invention of nuclear reactors. A nuclear reactor uses steam to generate power, but its invention marks that the civilization has reached a point in its development where they understand enough about their world to harness the power of radioactive isotopes.
Nuclear power is a cheap and efficient way for developing worlds to generate power. Nuclear plants can be built nearly anywhere, and generate very significant amounts of power. Once a developing world reaches this level, they have enough power to provide for basic needs, and may begin moving on down the road to the next stage.
Stage 3:
The third stepping-stone along the path to becoming an industrialized world is the development of cold fusion technology. With cold fusion reactors at their disposal the civilization may begin the most important stage.
Stage 4:
Stage for is the exploration stage. The beginning of Stage 4 is marked by the establishment of a permanent outpost in space. At Stage 4 a civilization explores its solar system; and if they find other habitable worlds within reach it will likely slow their development, but they will continue along the road.
At stage four the planet is usually becoming overcrowded. A planet like Earth, with proper infrastructure, can support a population of roughly ten billion, after that they will begin to hit a wall in terms of food production.
With the ability to explore their solar system, a civilization will begin to seek out new horizons for its burgeoning population. A civilization will not move on to the next stage until they out-grow they’re planet of origin.
Stage 5:
Stage 5 occurs when the planet of the civilizations origin can no longer sustain the size of its population. At this point the inhabitants will reach out for the stars, and leave the world that has for so long been there home behind. They will go out into space and build new, artificial worlds for themselves.
Stage 5 is the colonization stage. In this stage the surplus of the population moves into outer space colonies, using the abundant natural resources available in outer space. But they cannot leave their world behind entirely, and will still strive to maintain a connection with it.
Stage 6:
At this stage, the inhabitants of a solar system will find a way to move easily between the world which was there home, and the new homes they have built in space.
This connection
comes in the form of an orbital elevator, or tether. The concept is fairly
simple: build a space station in geosynchronous
orbit over the equator, an altitude of roughly 22,300 miles, at the L3 Lagrange
point between earth and the moon. (Although this point actually falls on the
far side of the earth from the moon.) At
this point, the sum of the gravitational forces from the Earth and the Moon
supply just the centripetal force necessary for a circular orbit within the
period of the moon.
A tower, or elevator, is then built between
the surface of the planet and the space station. A second smaller station will
have to be built further out, somewhere between the top of the Lagrange station
and the moon. This station must have a mass equal to roughly one-third the
total mass of the main station, tether, and balance foils, and will act as an
anchor or counterweight to balance the entire structure.
An orbital tether makes travel back and forth
between the planet and space as easy as riding an elevator, thus allowing the
planets wayward inhabitants to return at will. This clears the path for the
next stage in the development of the industrialized world.
Stage
7:
At Stage 7 a planet has become a fully
Industrialized World. The process is as follows:
First, a ring with an internal diameter of
approximately 30,000 miles is constructed, starting form the L3 station of the
Orbital Tether; the thickness will vary according to the requirements of the
civilization.
The ring will have a total internal diameter
of approximately 95,000 miles. Assuming it were only two miles wide it would
have an internal surface area of 190,000 square miles, which is equal to the
total surface area of the earth (including the portions covered by water.
The surface area alone of just the inside of
the ring is enough to support a population of 1,976,000,000 people. Making the
ring wider or thicker causes the livable area to expand exponentially.
If the entire surface of the earth were converted into farmland, we nearly 200,000,000 square miles, easily enough to support a population of 35,000,000,000.
The ring will spin counter to the Earth’s rotation, making one complete revolution every 23.56 hours. This effectively turns the entire planet into a gigantic dynamo, producing limitless productive energy. The gyroscopic action of the two bodies can be used to effect the earth’s rotation and straighten the planet’s access.
With the access straightened, the sun’s rays will strike planet’s surface evenly, ending seasons as we know them. The planet will be in eternal spring, meaning a year-round growing season. This will at the very least triple if not quadruple the possible food production of the planet, making possible a population of 140,000,000,000, barring in mind that these people would all be enjoying a diet equivalent to the average American’s.
Further, the power generated by the dynamo can be used to create a sort of energy field over the surface of the earth. This field could block out the harmful radiation of the sun. It could also be used to increase the air pressure by fifty percent. The shield would effectively turn the entire planet into a giant greenhouse, once again doubling or tripling the viable food production of the planet.
At this point, the planet is capable of supporting close to 500,000,000,000 billion people. We would need approximately 10,000,000,000 square miles in order to house all those people. This is assuming each person has 100 square feet of space in which to live, and not accounting for recreational or workspace.
Thus, the Industrialized World has reached a point where food production far outstrips living space, and the population has a great deal of room into which it may expand. The Industrialized World has infinite power at its disposal and now even the ability to effect the planet’s rotation. This is the fully Industrialized World, but it is not the end.
It is around this time that a civilization may develop the zero point technology. While this is not necessary to advance to the next stage, it is often around this stage that a civilization’s understanding of the universe reaches a point where they can create such devices.
It is important at this time to keep an open mind, and understand that the principles that drive zero point technology operate outside of everything you ever thought you knew about science.
Simple put, a Zero Point Modulator, or ZPM, is a device that operates outside of all theoretical law. ZPM’s are devices that draw power from the vacuum of space by using a subspace inversion to generate power. This requires part of the device to exist outside of normal space, therefore it is not subject to the same laws as ordinary matter.
Please note: a true Zero Point Modulator is not the same as a perpetual motion or “over unity” machine. A ZPM has no internal moving parts, and will operate for a very long period of time.
Also, a ZPM is not a free energy device. A small amount of energy must be input; in a sense a ZPM is a power amplifier.
However, two Zero Point Modulators used in tandem form a device called a Zero Point Generator. In a Zero Point Generator part of the power output from one ZPM is fed into a second ZPM, and part of its output sent back to the first, thus creating an infinite cycle that truly is a free energy device.
The Future, Stage 8:
Though many civilizations stop at this stage, there are two paths along which a civilization can continue to develop.
The first path involves the invention of faster-than-light travel. With the ability to reach beyond it’s home solar system, a civilization may expand into the rest of the galaxy. There will always be a few among any population who will reach to the stars, but many will choose to remain in the solar system where they began.
A civilization may advance down both paths, but only if enough of the people choose to remain on or near their home world.
With more and more space being required, and the exponentially rate at which the population will grow, a new solution will have to be found.
In many civilizations that achieve inter-stellar travel, the solution is simply to colonize new planets and spread out across the galaxy. If a civilization does not make this breakthrough , they will have to step back to Stage 5 and resume building orbiting space colonies.
Or, they may choose to construct something along the lines of a Dyson’s Sphere.
A Dyson’s Sphere (first proposed by in 1959 by astronomer Freemen Dyson in his book “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation) is an artificial sphere around the sun with an internal diameter of one Earth orbit. It would have a surface area equal to roughly 600,000,000 times that of the earth, or 120,000,000,000,000,000 one hundred twenty quadrillion square miles. That’s 633,600,000,000,000,000,000 six hundred and thirty-three quintillion, six hundred quadrillion square feet. Using the figure of 100 square feet for every person, you have a supportable population of 6,336,000,000,000,000,000 or six quintillion, three hundred thirty six quadrillion inhabitants. Assuming a starting population of 30,000,000,000 or thirty billion builds the sphere and then doubles itself every fifty years, the inhabitants would not begin to feel crowded for 1400 years!
The primary benefit of the Dyson’s Sphere is that like the ring model of the Fully Industrialized World it provides its inhabitants with unlimited energy. The original purpose behind the proposal of the sphere was to capture one hundred percent of the energy given off by the sun. could a population of six quintillion even use that much power? It is doubtful; the surpluses would be enormous.
There is another option, an intermediate step between a Dyson Sphere and a planet. This might be taken along the way to a complete Dyson Sphere or a Civilization may simply come to rest with it. Given the never ending nature of time it is entirely possible that a civilization may eventually come to posses several of each type of artificial habitat discussed in this paper.
But this is getting ahead, the habitat in question currently is referred to as a Ring World (First proposed by prominent author Larry Niven in his book “A Hole in Space”.
In a ring world, the civilization builds a ring 93,000,000 miles in diameter, or one earth orbit, giving it a length of six hundred million miles. Assuming they have a mass equal to Jupiter (1,898,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kilograms or 4,185,916,972,104,269,000,000,000,000 pounds) to work with, and if they build the ring 1,000,000 miles wide, they would have a thickness of about 3,300 feet. This would make the Ring World much sturdier than the Dyson Sphere.
A Ring World can also be spun for gravity much more easily and effectively than a Dyson Sphere. Rotating at 770 miles per second, the Ring World would have gravity equivalent to earth. It would not even need to be roofed over, with walls 1,000 miles around each rim very little atmosphere would leak out.
The Ring World would have a habitable surface area of about 3 million times that of the earth, or 60,000,000,000,000 square miles. This is enough for a very substantial population.
There is very little room for major advancement beyond Stage 8. A civilization that reaches this stage will have advanced for a very long time, and if it continues to survive there is no way of knowing where it will go beyond this point.
In conclusion, it is time to point out that these are not set rules for the advancement of a civilization on the road to becoming an Industrialized World. Stages 5 and 6 can sometimes be reversed, Stage Four may be indistinguishable from Stage 5, and Stage 3 may be skipped entirely. This is merely an observation of the road a civilization may take on the path to becoming a model Industrialized World.