I received a message on Facebook from Aubrey Colson about a desert colonization design idea that I thought was interesting.
Hey Michael,
You may have already seen this, but I saw this design project and thought you might enjoy it. When I saw it, I immediately thought about how you occasionally stress that we should be attempting to colonize the deserts, oceans, mountains, Antarctica and so on (as in your post The Chilly Frontier), before we attempt Mars or something– since it would be much cheaper and easier. Likewise, it sorta kinda reminded me of vertical farming. The images also look a bit like those 1970′s NASA space habitat illustrations you use in posts from time to time:
http://matsysdesign.com/2009/06/25/sietch-nevada/
Of course, I think with advanced molecular nanotech & AI, ultimately our deserts are probably going to look more like a lush Eden than a hallowed-out underground strip mall. That is, more radically and elegantly transformed, like I think your posts The Available Matter and Energy & The Future Might Look Like the Past allude to. (And not unlike de Grey’s recent paper talking about the presence of super-intelligent friendly AIs being in the background and non-obvious to us. No visible scaffolding.) Anyways, I’m rambling and telling things you already know. Hope you enjoy the link.
(Found it via Gizmodo via BLDGBLOG.)
-Aubrey
People putting the pieces together and understanding an overall interpersonal vision. Woo! Given that there are machines that can suck hundreds of gallons of water out of air with only 14 percent humidity, there are still numerous huge underground aquifers worldwide, and we recently invented hydrophobic sand, hopefully we should be able to soak the deserts in water soon. The “Water Wars” meme is nonsense.
As Doug Mulhall once put it at a conference, through MNT we’ll have the “Sahara Rainforest”. Of course, if MNT is impossible, self-replicating robotic infrastructure could provide the same outcome.