Humanity Will Never Become a "Type 1" Civilization
Some scientists need to face reality and stop being delusional.
We’re dissecting a PBS Spacetime video that proposes steps to “advance” humanity to a “type-1” civilization on the Kardashev Scale*. The video focuses on the requirements for achieving Type I status, which involves harnessing all available planetary energy. Two primary methods are discussed: massive solar power collection, potentially from space-based arrays, and large-scale fusion power generation. The video also speculates on the potential uses of this vast energy, including environmental remediation and further technological advancement.
*The Kardashev Scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on its energy consumption. It was proposed by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in 1964 and divides civilizations into different types (I, II, and III) based on the amount of energy they can harness and control.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 1/5
Key Challenges
Scale:
The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors.
Detailed Explanation:
The Earth’s surface area is 510 × 10^6 km². Assuming "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" means at least 100 × 10^12 km², the calculation is:
100 × 10^12 km² / 510 × 10^6 km² ≈ 196,078 times the Earth’s surface area.
To manufacture solar panels to cover this area, assuming the production rate is 4 GW/year (equivalent to 10^7 m²/year of panels), we can calculate how long it would take:
Math:
(10^20 m²) / (10^7 m²/year) = 10^13 years.
Simplified Explanation: We’d need to make solar panels for 10 trillion years, which is far longer than the Sun will even last (around 5 billion years). This is an absurdly unrealistic time frame.
Launch Requirements:
Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Math:
To launch 1 trillion kg of material:
1,000,000,000,000 kg / 1,000,000 kg/year = 1,000,000 years to launch just 1 trillion kg of material.
If the total material required is 10 trillion kg, the time required becomes:
Math:
1,000,000 years × 10 = 10,000,000 years.
Detailed Explanation: Even with an optimistic 100x improvement in launch capacity, it would still take 100,000 years to launch all the material into space. This is a staggering amount of time.
Simplified Explanation: Humanity will be long extinct before we even finish shipping the materials to space. It’s like trying to move the Earth’s entire population to another planet, one suitcase at a time.
Required Mass:
Even with a 10x thickness reduction, the panels still weigh several trillion kilograms.
Detailed Explanation: Launching such a massive amount of material would require:
Math:
If we launch at the current rate of 1,000,000 kg/year, then to launch 1 trillion kg, it would take:
1,000,000,000,000 kg / 1,000,000 kg/year = 1,000,000 years.
Simplified Explanation: It’s like trying to fill a swimming pool one drop of water at a time, and the pool is the size of a football field.
Microwave Power Transmission:
Power Losses during Transmission:
High losses (30–50%) make the system inefficient.
Detailed Explanation:
If we want to transmit 10 GW, 30-50% will be lost. That means we are only effectively delivering 5-7 GW instead of the full 10 GW, which dramatically reduces efficiency.
Simplified Explanation: It’s like trying to pour a gallon of water into a bucket with a hole in it—half of it ends up on the floor.
Safety Concerns with High-Power Microwave Beams:
The power from high-frequency microwaves could have disastrous consequences if misdirected.
Simplified Explanation: A misplaced beam could fry birds, planes, and even people—like a real-life “death ray” that burns everything in its path.
Never Demonstrated at Scale:
Detailed Explanation:
Current small-scale experiments involving microwave power transmission (like in laboratories) can't be scaled up to deliver gigawatts of power.
Simplified Explanation: It’s like trying to build a skyscraper without even having a working elevator to test.
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Analysis
Power Requirements:
Math:
Global energy demand: 10^17 W (which is 100,000 times the energy output of the entire world today).
Each ITER reactor produces 500 MW (5 × 10^8 W).
To meet global demand, the number of reactors required is:
(10^17 W) / (5 × 10^8 W/reactor) = 2 × 10^8 reactors.
Even reducing the number of reactors to 10,000 reactors would only produce 10^13 W, which is 10,000 times less than needed.
Detailed Explanation: The math shows that even with highly optimistic assumptions, scaling up fusion plants to meet global energy needs is mathematically impossible with current reactor designs. The numbers don’t add up.
Simplified Explanation: You would need 200 million reactors to meet the demand, and we haven’t even been able to get a single one working properly yet.
Key Issues
Costs:
Math:
If the ITER reactors cost $22 billion each, building 10,000 reactors would cost:
10,000 reactors × $22 billion/reactor = $220 trillion.
This is more than double the current global GDP of about $100 trillion.
Detailed Explanation: The total cost would bankrupt the entire global economy multiple times over, making this solution economically unfeasible.
Simplified Explanation: It’s like asking everyone on Earth to donate 20 times their life savings to fund this project—it’s just not possible.
Tritium Supply Challenges:
Math:
Current global tritium reserves are under 20 kg. Each reactor needs 10 kg/year of tritium.
For 10,000 reactors, the tritium required would be:
10,000 reactors × 10 kg/year = 100,000 kg/year.
Breeding this much tritium would require even more reactors, creating a vicious cycle.
Simplified Explanation: It’s like trying to fuel a fleet of planes with just a single drop of fuel for every reactor. It simply doesn't add up.
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 1/5
Challenges
Material Requirements:
Math:
To lay 100,000 km of superconducting cable, we would need:
100,000 km × 50 kg/km = 5,000,000 kg of superconducting materials.
Assuming current production is 10,000 kg/year, we calculate:
5,000,000 kg / 10,000 kg/year = 500 years to produce the necessary amount of material.
Detailed Explanation: Producing enough superconducting material would take centuries, ignoring the competition for materials from other industries.
Simplified Explanation: It’s like trying to build a house with bricks that take a year to make each. At this rate, we’d never finish.
Cooling Infrastructure:
A global grid would need continuous cooling with liquid helium or nitrogen.
Detailed Explanation: Maintaining constant cooling for the entire planet would be incredibly costly and require constant attention, adding complexity.
Simplified Explanation: It’s like trying to keep the whole planet in a giant freezer, and the freezer always needs to be topped up with cooling liquid.
Maintenance:
The grid would require constant maintenance to stay functional.
Detailed Explanation: Even a minor disruption in cooling or material failure could render the entire grid inoperable. The complexity of such a system makes it highly unreliable.
Simplified Explanation: If one piece breaks, the whole thing could go down—like Christmas lights, where if one bulb goes out, the whole string stops working.
Overall Project Feasibility: 1/5
The proposals look grand on paper, but the numbers reveal just how unfeasible they are. Each challenge, from material requirements to costs and time scales, is overwhelming. If you’re understand why these projects are impractical, keep reading.
The Delusional Optimism Problem
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
Detailed Explanation:
Predictions for revolutionary technologies often ignore how challenges multiply as systems scale. For instance, fusion has been "50 years away" for 50 years because every time we solve one problem, new ones appear. If we were to scale fusion reactors globally, it would take centuries. To put that in perspective, let's assume it takes 50 years to develop a working fusion reactor, and we'd need 5,000 reactors. So:50 years * 5,000 reactors = 250,000 years. Achieving global fusion energy would take over 250,000 years, and that’s just for the reactors themselves, not including the support infrastructure.
Simplified Explanation:
Every time we think we're close to fusion, new problems pop up. If you’re trying to set up fusion plants all over the world, it would take hundreds of thousands of years to get enough working reactors, even if everything goes perfectly. It’s like building a giant city, but instead of a few years, you’re looking at thousands of years of work.
2. Resource Availability Assumption
Detailed Explanation:
The rare materials required for these projects are scarce. For instance, superconductors require about 5 million kg of yttrium, but the world produces only 10,000 kg/year of yttrium. So:5,000,000 kg / 10,000 kg/year = 500 years. Even if we ramp up production 100 times, this would still take 5 years to get just one year's worth of materials. For all the materials needed, this could stretch into centuries.
Simplified Explanation:
Right now, we produce about 10,000 kg of yttrium per year, but we need 5 million kg to make the superconductors. If we don't find more yttrium, just getting enough material could take 500 years. Even if we increase production by 100 times, we’re still looking at 5 years to just get the material for one year of work. It's like trying to get a huge amount of wood to build houses, but the forest only produces a small amount every year.
3. Economic Handwaving
Detailed Explanation:
The cost of fusion reactors alone would be enormous. The ITER fusion reactor costs $22 billion, and we would need 5,000 reactors to meet global demand. So the total cost for fusion would be:22,000,000,000 USD * 5,000 = 110,000,000,000,000 USD (or $110 trillion). This is more than the entire global GDP, which is approximately $100 trillion. Therefore, funding this project would require resources exceeding the entire world economy, and this doesn't include the $100 trillion per year needed for maintenance and resource extraction.
Simplified Explanation:
Just the cost of building fusion reactors is enough to bankrupt the whole world. We would need 5,000 reactors, and each one costs about $22 billion. That totals up to $110 trillion—more than the entire world’s yearly income. To put it simply, we’d need 100% of the world’s annual output for over a year just to build these reactors, and that doesn’t even include paying for ongoing operations. It's like trying to build 5,000 of the most expensive homes in the world, when you can’t even afford one.
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
Detailed Explanation:
Perfect international cooperation is unrealistic. For example, securing space-based solar power (SPS) would require a global agreement to build huge microwave transmitters in orbit. The issue? Microwave beams at the scale needed would release trillions of watts of power—a massive potential security risk, as one misfired beam could destroy large areas of land. Negotiating and ensuring trust between nations to avoid weaponization could take decades, assuming no political disruption.Simplified Explanation:
Getting countries to agree on any of these ideas is hard enough, but getting them to agree on space-based solar power is nearly impossible. The risks from the technology, like the threat of massive microwave beams being weaponized, would spark huge international conflicts. Even if everyone agreed on the science, the political fights would stretch on for decades—imagine trying to get every country on Earth to agree to a global peace treaty that’s never been done before.
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
Detailed Explanation:
Scaling up technology from a lab prototype to a global system often reveals new issues. Building just 10,000 fusion reactors would face significant scaling challenges, including material degradation and maintenance. For example, even if we deployed one reactor every 6 months, it would take:10,000 reactors / 2 reactors/year = 5,000 years. That’s 5,000 years to deploy just the reactors, without considering the constant breakdowns and repairs needed for each one.
Simplified Explanation:
Building a single reactor in the lab is one thing, but deploying 10,000 reactors across the globe is a different problem entirely. Even if we could build one every 6 months, it would take us 5,000 years to get everything set up. That doesn’t even consider the constant breakdowns and repairs we’d need to do along the way. It's like trying to build 10,000 skyscrapers, each with their own set of problems to solve.
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
Detailed Explanation:
Transitioning to new technologies creates unforeseen environmental costs. For instance, recycling solar panels could generate 100 million tons of e-waste over a 30-year period. Assuming an industry-wide average of 5% recycling efficiency, we would only be able to process 5 million tons in 30 years, while the rest goes to landfills.Simplified Explanation:
Even if we switch to solar or other technologies, we’re still going to have a huge mess to clean up later. Solar panels, for example, are expected to create about 100 million tons of waste in 30 years, and the current recycling process only handles about 5% of that. The rest of it will just pile up in landfills, which means we’ll be dealing with a massive environmental problem in the future.
Example of Over-Optimism
The casual mention of needing "a few trillion kilograms" for solar arrays doesn’t account for the impossibility of producing that much material. The current global manufacturing output is around 1 trillion kg/year, meaning we would need:
5,000,000,000,000 kg / 1,000,000,000,000 kg/year = 5,000 years. Producing that much material would take 5,000 years at the current manufacturing rates. Even a 100x increase would only reduce the timeline to 50 years.
Root Causes of Scientific Optimism
Career Incentives: Funding often requires optimistic predictions, even if unrealistic.
Specialization Blindness: Experts in one field may miss challenges outside their areas of expertise.
Solution-Oriented Mindset: Optimism overlooks significant roadblocks.
Public Inspiration: Big ideas attract attention but often lack practical feasibility.
Focus on Technical Possibility: The focus on what could be done overshadows what is actually feasible.
Path to a Type I Civilization
Reaching a Type I civilization requires:
Revolutionary advances in energy production, materials science, and transportation.
Unprecedented global cooperation across political, economic, and cultural divides.
Massive resource reallocation on a global scale, including restructuring the world economy.
Centuries of sustained effort—global progress will take hundreds of years, not decades.
Solutions to unforeseen technological and societal challenges that will emerge over time.
So basically, we’re never getting there :)