Thought experiment: High tech space economy after overshoot

This is probably going to one of the more speculative posts I will write, and its mostly a thought experiment to explore the consequences of having a high tech economy side by side with a low tech economy, a state of affairs that is likely to remain past overshoot. I don't think that a high tech space economy will appear, or at least not in this way, this more to look at the idea of how some high tech may be implemented in the future through a simplistic model. A contemporary analogy would be the spread of mobile phones throughout the third world and how their used, in some parts of Africa mobile phones are used as banks using the phone credit as currency. It could also be something like trading climate and meteorological models/information for goods and/or food from another government. This is mostly speculation and a thought experiment, not a plan of action or endorsement. The scenario below is highly unlikely.


Moon dust can be turned into solar panels so in theory you could have a moon base that is sustainably powered by vast tracts of solar panels. Then you could have lunar mining to provide the raw materials, agriculture and manufacturing in several lunar bases. A Mars colony could be established and survive via solar panels and gain raw resources either from the red planet itself, or from asteroid mining, only one base is required for this and their'll likely be one on the moon. If your wondering, according to atomic rockets (link in the sidebar) for a population to survive 1000's of years without genetic problems, you need 500 hand picked breeding age colonists, so preferably 1000 unrelated breeding age colonists from all corners of the world. For the purposes of this thought experiment, assume this system goes through the process of being created now and then being finished and made self-sufficient by the next major empires (most likely some combination of BRICS) within several decades.

This self-sufficiency would most likely entail a very frugal energy use, low expansion rate and most energy/materials being used for maintenance, therefore low living standards for the colonists. The self sufficiency allows the space economy to expand slowly even while ground based civilization is collapsing. So once ground based civilization has recovered, the space economy could easily have expanded to the point (remember it has centuries) that substantial trade can happen. So rather than looking at the space economy and how it would work, beyond the simplistic outline above, and since this is a thought experiment, let's look at how the high tech space economy interacts with the low tech earth based economy.

So what could they trade with each over, and to facilitate this trade we can assume a Space elevator is built (This is to allow trade with minimal energy expenditure). An important point about building space elevators is that the first one is incredibly expensive, but after that their incredibly cheap (relatively speaking). Since this is a thought experiment we can go all the way and assume with during the recovery from overshoot an orbital ring is built around the equator with multiple elevators. The orbital ring contains foundries, factories and few of the other things that would make sense in space (despite likely being controlled by the ground, this is part of the space economy). So trade could occur from most parts of the planet, so the question remains what could be traded and what interactions could exist.

I remember an article about manufacturing in space and its advantages, such as steel being of a higher quality and the ability to extract purer substances than otherwise. So on the orbital ring part it would make sense for iron ore and other raw metals to be processed and then be shipped down, much of this would also be used for space based manufacturing, only some of which would return to Earth. Food would likely be sent up as payment. And remember this is all taking place while most of the earth is in a low tech state (relative to the space stuff or even current civilization). Thus one potential trade is that of primary goods (food and raw ore) in exchange for high quality secondary goods (space steel) as well as some tertiary goods (computers, solar panels etc).

There's a picture on the Wikipedia page of a space elevator anchor which is acting as a deep water seaport, along side  a sailing ship. We can use that as a central image to this thought experiment. The low tech being used side by side with the high tech. So I've put the picture on the right. Change that single small sailing ship to a fleet of large wooden sailing ships and the economy can be seen in action. Even if most civilian ships are made of wood, thanks to a small technical trick that was invented just before iron steamers became dominate, huge wooden ships can now be built (previously their were severe limits to the size that wooden boats could be made before they 'straightened' and broke). The low tech economy trades food, raw materials and some low tech manufactured goods (say silk clothes) for high class materials (space steel) and high technology equipment (computers) and possibly energy as well. Since its in space, solar panels will work a lot better, so trading that energy for stuff isn't out of the question (though it is likely that when the energy content of the food traded is worked out net energy is normally towards space). And for the space economy, many goods (such as fibers) would be better gained from other ground based sources, especially since in many ways their production would be highly limited in space.

The space economy could additionally provide information services, say weather pattern data or such along with satellite communications.  Otherwise it would provide high class materials or chemicals (its easier to purify things in space), along with advanced manufactured components that only need a power source. Niche items would be in high demand, such as solar panels for remote areas for example and jet aircraft.

So given that the above scenario is unlikely, its a thought experiment after all, how could we see this dynamic in the future. Well we already do, already mentioned is the proliferation of mobile phones in the third world. The Africans who have started to use them as adhoc banks and call time as a stable currency, are exploiting a high technology in a profoundly innovative way. It also points out the benefits to a low tech economy that has access to a limited, but useful, set of high tech equipment. There's a flash game on the internet called 3^rd world farmer, have a look, its a simulation of life as a third world farmer, and the first upgrade under the light bulb tag is communications. Its a picture of a mobile phone and it explains that with a communication network farmers can coordinate sales and get a higher income. A self-contained, easily powered communication set makes perfect sense in the rural third world, which is why mobile phones are popular there. Other things like solar panels to power remote clinics, wind generators on ships to power fridges and other relatively high tech gadgets also make sense.

After the peak there are quite a few goods an ecotechnic society could trade with the various non-technical societies, like agricultural, horticultural or rancher based societies and other ecotechnic societies with access to different technologies. Low energy use computers to be used for bureaucracies or  mathematical modelling that can run on simple renewable technologies could easily be in high demand. Certain military equipment, especially if it can be maintained easily, would be highly sought after by governments trying to compete and along with high precision manufacturing equipment  for various industries. The criteria is an artifact that when built can then be easily maintained or run with the sort of inputs a low-tech society can provide. This is actually separate from the requirements to create a technology. Think of the latter as set up costs and the former as running costs.


This is one of the likely interactions that ecotechnic societies will have with other civilization types (such as salvage societies) and internally with its differing tech sections (due to the vagaries of geography and local resources). Trading certain high tech goods that the other economies find useful but can't produce on their own, for raw resources and goods so that the ecotechnic economy can specialize more than otherwise would be beneficial to both sides. The driving force is simply the varying local resources, manufacturing capabilities and depending on how it turns out, the resurgence of sailing for international trade.