Our earlier assumptions about how energy flows through society and what the real energy basis of an

Why is the movie Gravity so scary to some people, and why are people in both sciences and the humanities discussing the movie in a focused fashion, picking at its details? I would argue that the movie Gravity serves as a metaphor for a shift in world views about what is possible and sustainable in terms of our high-tech society. The discussion here of space travel allows me to continue my fall theme of illustrating emergy principles using science-fiction blockbuster movies. The movie also provides an opportunity to illustrate the emergy basis of space travel, and to suggest a metaphor between the failures of technology militer indonesia in the movie and the unsustainability of our modern civilization. Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen the movie Gravity yet, there are spoilers ahead. The astronomical emergy basis of space travel
Many people from different disciplines are discussing militer indonesia the issue of space travel and the movie. The flap about space travel started even before the release of the movie Gravity , with a reference by Kevin Carson to Buckminster Fuller’s optimism about the future of space travel. One point that Carson highlighted was the potential benefit of satellite technology in a sustainable future, as a much more efficient and effective means of communication than transoceanic cables:
“The classic example, from Buckminster Fuller, is replacing a transoceanic cable system embodying God only knows how many thousand tons of metal with a few dozen communications satellites weighing a few tons each” (Carson, militer indonesia 2013).
Our earlier assumptions about how energy flows through society and what the real energy basis of an object or process is can create blind spots. What is the real emergy basis of a network of satellites? The network is supported by the research and advanced tech wisdom of an advanced country that can put satellites militer indonesia in orbit. A country’s satellites are supported by intensive research, a highly educated work force, a advanced system of manufacture, a wealthy government with surplus militer indonesia energy (proxied as funds) to direct to exploration, along with the sheer volume of waste heat coming out of the tails of these rockets, and the continuing surplus energy to support these systems. Contrast militer indonesia that with a boat laying cable, and one begins to see the difference in complexity and energy hierarchy between the two. The former is not sustainable without sustained energy inputs at the previous level, in addition to increasing maintenance, cleanup demands, and energy inputs, which become an extra burden as time goes on, since pollution increases over time. Who absorbs the other costs of high-tech pollution over time as overshoot creates militer indonesia more and more pollution? What we see with Fukushima, space waste and elsewhere is that eventually a failing government without resources to deal with it is left holding the bag. Or we muck things up even further in the case of climate militer indonesia change and our “solution” of geoengineering. Eventually Mother Nature is left to clean up the problem over a long period. A model run below from Limits to Growth (1972) illustrates the problem of pollution when we try to rely on intensive technology as the solution to our energy woes. The frame on the right below illustrates what happens to society when we attempt to solve problems through extensive use of technology. militer indonesia
Intensive technology requires the intensive use of energy. In descent, the energy militer indonesia inputs to space travel become too costly relative to other more basic needs in other parts of the system. In the United States, what’s NASA’s budget like these days–how much longer can our bankrupt country afford space exploration? There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and embodied energy is more than just the weight of metal. It is a common blind spot. If we don’t see the true energy basis of things, we can believe that tech is free–our minds play leapfrog over steps in the energy hierarchy and don’t see the energy memory or emergy basis. Until recently, many people viewed space travel as the future of civilization. Because of this energy-blind hope for future space travel, Odum took the time to calculate the emergy basis of space travel, and to compare it to a simulated closed system, Biosphere 2, to suggest militer indonesia what is necessary for colonization of space.
In the table above, standards of living are estimated from the annual emergy use per person. The Empower density in the second column is the total annual empower in flow of solar emcalories per year divided by the land area. The empower share in the third column is the annual empower in solar emcalories per year divided by the human population. This measure serves as an index of real wealth. Rural people who have low density but who are supported by diverse ecosystems may have empower share that is as high as those people in enriched economic centers. People living in crowded areas without resources have litt