The problem, as always, is how to FEED such a space.Feed, you mean food?
The problem, as always, is how to FEED such a space.Feed, you mean food?
Some people claim, Earth in its present state is capable of producing food for several times more people, than that 7 billion now?
We do not put enough attention to agriculture the way we do it presently. There is a lot of room for improvement.
And I am not talking about what, for example, Monsanto people try to do. Simple things can still bring crops much larger.
Soylent green is kinda fact. We do not like to think about it probably, but the truth is, our bodies as they are decomposed after death, go back (in form of inorganic matter) to the circulation of matter on our planet. And this is it. Some of atoms in food we eat have a chance to be in the past in bodies of others.
For improved agriculture, this example is good, as it says about some actually ancient technology, that they say is superior to our present one.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/articles/Exped.pdf (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/articles/Exped.pdf)
The article is by Clark L. Erickson "Putting Ancient Agriculture Back to Work", Expedition, 30(1):8-16, 1988.
And fragment of Abstract/Intro:
"The remains of an extensive ancient agricultural system
built and used by Andean peoples centuries ago are found
throughout the vast high plain surrounding Lake Titicaca in the
Andean countries of Peru and Bolivia (Figs. 1, 2). Raised fields are large
elevated planting platforms which provided drainage, improved soil
conditions, and improved temperatures for crops, The remains of
prehistoric raised fields, elaborate sunken gardens, and agricultural
terraces cover tens of thousands of hectares in the region, and provide
evidence of the impressive engineering abilities of the peoples who
lived there in pre-Columbian times.
Our recent investigations of raised field agriculture demonstrate
not only the technological expertise of the past cultures, but also that
these systems could be re-used today to make high altitude lands
more productive. In a region such as the Andes, where conditions of
soil and climate greatly limit agricultural potential, technological
methods to augment productivity have been increasingly necessary to
support the growing populations of Quechua and Aymara farmers who
live there today. The reuse of raised fields may be an economical and
ecologically sound alternative to agricultural development based on
expensive imported technology."
A single example, but the fact that in ancient times they were able to make agriculture better than people do today speaks volumes to me.
And energy, there is an interesting NASA research on energy from orbit:
http://mashable.com/2013/08/29/nasa-satellite-solar-power/ (http://mashable.com/2013/08/29/nasa-satellite-solar-power/)
That may be only some article with little details, but one can find out more, what they do about it in NASA.
I have read recently, that as on Earth we have to consider problems of weather conditions for solar plants, there is no such problems on orbit.
There would be other problems I guess. Anyway, "microwaving" energy from orbit is some way of getting more. Sun have abundance of it.
Some considerations to the extreme would be Dyson sphere. And this is like offtopic here. But Ringworld by Larry Niven was more interesting idea. :) I enjoyed the story very much.
The problem is that for every X number of people, you need Y acres of food production.