There are two ways to solve the environmental crisis. The one that is exclusively promoted by environmental organizations is to "use less." For two decades they've been teaching the idea that industrial growth is bad because industry is poisoning us. Regardless, record numbers of cars and disposable cameras are sold each year, and record numbers of people still fly around the world.

The environmental movement is losing the war. Anyone who suspects that to be true should seriously consider every alternative strategy. This author only knows of one other strategy, and the fact that it was proposed by the world's most advanced laboratory should give it some extra weight.

Basically, the idea is an amazingly fast way of getting industry, and the pollution it creates, off of Earth and onto the Moon instead. Picture giant cargo pods full of environmentally friendly tools, toys, and even food, gliding into the oceans near major ports, and almost unlimited solar power also being beamed down, and you'll have a hint at what the strategy promises.

NASA's 1980 study proposed a 20 year project to build a solar powered robot that is sophisticated enough to build another robot like itself. From mining ore to assembling a clone to maintaining and repairing itself, not one person would be needed; except to give the order to start. This type of robot is sometimes called a replicator or universal assembler. NASA titled its proposal Self-Replicating Lunar Factory and Demonstration.

Replicators are easy to build, in principle, because we already know how industry is constructed and operated, and how human bodies accomplish all the necessary tasks. We also know that intelligent computers are not needed, because microscopic replicators like plankton have none; they operate on mechanical priciples alone. Designing an integrated robotic system that can perform a complete list of industrial tasks is not too much to ask of science in the next twenty years.

Mathematically, replicators reproduce exactly like bacteria, which simply divide into two when they grow big enough to do so. A simple formula which gives the clone or bacteria population after a given number of generations is: population = 2^generations. Using the formula this rough table can be derived.

Generations	Population	..........	Generations	Population
0	1
1	2		10	one thousand+
2	4		20	one million+
3	8		30	one billion+
4	16		40	one trillion+
5	32		50	one quadrillion+

One can readily see an immensely powerful idea here. Following the trend we find that the robot population would exceed the estimated number of atoms in the universe (approx 1x10⁷⁰ ) before the 230th generation was reached!

Earth based industry has been doubling in a similar way throughout history and is still doing so. Indeed, that and population doublings are the two root causes of the environmental crisis. At a rough guess, industry has probably increased by a factor of 32 or more in the last hundred years. Count the cars and tanks and kitchen gadgets sold each year and you can believe it is 32 times more than everything manufactured in 1896. Looking at the table above it can be seen that an increase of 32 is equivalent to 5 generations, so we can estimate that the average doubling rate has been about 20 years. However, only a fraction of industry's production was used to support the doubling process, and industry has become many times more efficient during that century. If all of its production were put into expanding the base, it seems likely that today's industry could double in less than 5 years.

How fast could a fully automated industry double if all of its resources went into the process? Robots are already faster than people at many industrial tasks and are getting faster all the time. NASA's super robot of twenty years development can be expected to be highly efficient, and should replicate at least a few times faster than today's industry can. Considering this, the author feels justified in making the following prediction.

Assuming a well funded project, NASA's first model would take nearly 20 years to design and build, but would replicate in a year at most. Continuing improvements would make them replicate faster, at least doubling their speed every decade. Using that premise the following table is devised.

Year ......	Generations...	Replication Rate...	Population
.	.	.	.
20	0	1 year	1
25	5		32
30	10	6 months	one thousand+
35	20		one million+
40	30	3 months	one billion+
42.5	40		one trillion+
45	50		one quadrillion+

If each clone massed 100 tons as NASA proposed, then 42.5 years after the project started the combined mass would be 100 trillion tons. Further, the machines would be producing that many tons of hi-tech gadgetry every three months.

To put it in perspective, that's one large aircraft carrier a year for every person now living. At that rate the Moon would last 16 million years.

Another possibility is that the first replicator might be designed with a replication rate of three months. Without further improvements, the robot population would hit the trillion mark in ten years. In that case the payoff could be well within the lifetime of most of the people reading this.

In 1990, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, then President of the Space Studies Institute (now deceased), suggested a ten year development project with a two month replication rate. That seems overly optomistic, but many experts were involved in the calculations and serious research was done into engineering the components. The research continues today, funded only by SSI members. Two links to SSI are provided below.

Many people will be skeptical, but NASA claimed they could build a replicator 16 years ago. Many people were similarly doubtful in 1961, when NASA claimed it could land a man on the Moon in less than 9 years. The space age was then 4 years old. A safer bet is that NASA can do anything it claims, and can do it faster better and cheaper 16 years later.

A few decades after starting a lunar replicator project we would have a lunar industrial output of hundreds of trillions of tons annually. That is enough to build almost anything we can imagine. Machines to cleanup polluted areas on Earth, to reforest and landscape wasteland, to filter the atmosphere and oceans of toxic compounds, and to provide unlimited electric power to Earth. Further, if we decide to build automated gardens on the Moon or in orbit about Earth, then huge tracts of the best land on Earth will become available for spacious manufactured cities and estates. In this scenario, tens of billions of people can co-exist with nature since they would not be exploiting and polluting it as we now do.

Population growth is inherently good since it means that more artistic and scientific geniuses are born in each generation to enrich our civilization. We should consider population growth as a positive goal if it can be achieved without destroying Earth's resources.

Before the time Earth really becomes crowded, an environmentally friendly means of moving large numbers of people to and from luxurious orbital cities would be available. The brute force of replicating industry makes any machines, like space planes, cities and farms, available in great numbers for the low cost of designing them. It is the true horn of plenty. If human population rose to 6.5 trillion over the next few centuries, each person's share of the Moon would be one billion tons, and if they took just the best 1/10 of 1% they'd still have a million tons each. That's a giant mansion, a jumbo jet, and 10 aircraft carriers.

If we limit the use of our Moon to one quadrillion tons, an amount that staggers the imagination, more than 99.9999% of the Moon would remain, -it is more than six million times a quadrillion tons. The effects on tides or weather would be imperceptible at that level.

Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter and is many times more massive than ours. It is also known to have more than a thousand quadrillion tons of frozen water on its surface. Our moon need only be used as a stepping stone to that richer resource. Human population could easily increase into thousands of trillions using Ganymede alone, and that would neatly solve the population problem for the next 1000 years.

NASA believed it could make this dream come true within a reasonable budget sixteen years ago, but the vast majority of people never heard about it, -and few have since. A replicator project may be the key to our survival, but it seems unlikely to happen before a favorable public consensus has been reached. Fortunately, the payoff is so spectacular that the public will probably want it and choose it, -once they find out about it. Hopefully, this web page will help set that stage.

It is axiomatic that the best decisions are based on the most complete knowledge. If you have just now learned about the replicator option, then this web site's goal has been advanced. If you can help spread the word farther, please do.

This essay was written by Paul B. Dennis,

and was added to the web on Aug 31, 1996. - It's always under construction.

There's more below!

The following links support many of the ideas in this essay.

WORLD SCIENTISTS' WARNING TO HUMANITY

A Specific Mass-Population System: PBDennis

Robot, build thyself: Discover Magazine

NASA's Lunar Replicator Proposal

Space Studies Inst. Replicator

Nanotechnology Replicator

Solar Power Satelites

Space Colonies

Everything below this line is new since Dec 12, 1996.

Here's a document signed by almost a hundred science organizations protesting

the lack of science and technology presented to the UN on which to base a world plan.

Science and Technology and the Future of Cities

How you can help:

Many people who read this essay recognize NASA's replicator project as one which deserves serious funding. However, the establishment will not educate the public to the idea, so it is dead without even a discussion.

You can help by educating the public. If you own a web site you can host a link. A long and growing list of links will prove its popularity and force the issue into the open. If you are just a surfer, recommend this essay to sites you later visit which look like they'd be interested, and which ask for suggestions. A grass-roots initiative is called for if you want it to have a chance of happening.

Here is the parent address of this document.

The Environmental Crisis and NASA's Proposal.

http://mypage.direct.ca/p/pbdennis/index.html