If we’re out in the solar system, we can have a trillion humans in the solar system, which means we would have 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins.
The world population now is ten times what it was in Mozart’s day. The reason we don’t have ten Mozarts now isn’t because of a population shortage, it’s because too many of those people are living in inescapable poverty so Bezos can indulge his fantasies.
No, you see, they're completely free people except for the part where we control their employment and if they can't pay their bills we cut off their air.
We've got a lot of problems with space before we can ever put a trillion people in space. Between the vacuum and radiation of space and the fact that our bodies don't function well in extended zero-G, just keeping a few people alive up there is a monumental task. Then you have the potential for industrial accidents to poison the entire ecosystem and micrometeorite impacts trying to ventilate the structure - a structure that is being weakened by constant exposure to cosmic radiation.
I mean eventually we have to go to space or die and I prefer the former but we are very, very far away from that. To the point where the suggestion is science fiction, not being a visionary pioneer.
We don't even know if it is possible to successfully give birth to a healthy baby in space. Even if we got one of these colonies up and running, it may only last a generation if the population can't be self-sustaining.
Space is the eventuality of mankind. We can't neglect it. But it is right that we can't just discard planet earth and expect we will fare any better up there where materials are scarce and every law of nature is trying to kill you.
If we can find the money and political will to terraform something like Mars, we should probably take .01% of that budget and turn the earth into paradise first.
and before, really. At least, after ww2, scifi was all about space ships and colonies on the moon (and venus. Until they realized how... extremely inhospitable Venus is.)
Here’s what he’s doing: not launching a damn thing. Maybe he should be focused on getting BE-4 production into the double digits in engines made and certified for flight before we worry about the millions of space colonies.