The Bottleneck Effect on Interplanetary and Interstellar Growth over the Coming Millennium

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S. Ashworth (2016), JBIS69, pp.20-26

Refcode: 2016.69.20
Keywords: Space colonisation, Interstellar travel, Economic growth

Abstract:
Recent estimates of future growth in the industrial power production of human civilisation have extrapolated from existing trends. But this is invalid because most of that future growth will need to take place in space and on other planets of the Solar System, to which access from Earth is restricted by a transport bottleneck. A set of four scenarios is presented which take account of that bottleneck. Projections of when manned interstellar travel may begin are strongly dependent upon such growth, and when the bottleneck effect is accounted for those projections are set back by a period in the range of a couple of centuries to a millennium.