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Space colonies shaped like giant cylinders, miles wide and miles long, containing cities the size of San Francisco. Trillions of people could someday live in space, and more when we colonize other solar systems in the galaxy, but is there any real reason to create an arbitrarily large human population in space? Given the rate at which our population can grow, even the vast resources of space are no solution to overpopulation. If space colonies are ever built they will created for utilitarian reasons like supporting large workforces in space for constructing solar power satellites and fleets of large interplanetary ships and for the pure excitement and challenge of such architectural wonders in a future time when cost is no object largely due to robotic mass production. Certainly, we must defeat poverty on Earth before devoting wealth to fantastic projects like the building of luxurious cities in space. |
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