Bob Schroeck Wrote:We don't need to move the planet -- just chunks of it. We have spindizzy tech, after all. Do a Disneyworld-sized land buy in an area with acceptable real estate prices, and do it the same way Disney did -- with a million little front companies to keep people from realizing what we're up to and jacking their prices. Build colonly infrastructure while taking applications and screening potential colonists. Set up a local Net with lots and lots of storage, slurp the Internet and every digital library you can reach, buy what you can't get for free, copy or buy artworks, etc. Assuming no budgetary problems, you could probably create a super-Grover's Corners in ten years or less, and fill it with upwards of a million people and still have room for farming -- or go wavetech replicators for all food and put several million in the thing. Just one such colonly would be more than enough to maintain genetic diversity and the history of human achievement -- but make several, in different parts of the world, and get redundancy in the records and more cultural diversity.
Yeah, a couple of million "Living Estates" sounds more realistic...
becoming more efficient with larger mass doesn't mean you need less energy to move more mass... just that you need less energy per kilogram. And Earth still is an awful lot of mass unnecessary to rescue everyone.