Aswe develop as a civilization, the need for energy correlates with the growth in population and technology. There are many ways to accommodate this need as we poise our growth to develop up the Kardashev scale. It’s worth noting that unsustainable population growth is linked to social inequality and that a civilization moving up the Kardashev scale could not do so in the current global climate, the infrastructure needed requires resource equity and social harmony. Which means that as we advance population becomes less of a factor and our populations will collapse from our current trajectory and stabilize without the pressures to spike again. (developed nations tend to have declining populations and developing tend to have exploding populations, this has a number of reasons but gender inequality is the most all-encompassing factor) A type 1 Planet would have to master all of its renewable resources and eliminate the use of dirty planet based energy like fossil fuels. As well as replacing the old infrastructure with a sustainable and laterally scaled system. This is only the first step, but it lays the foundation for the systems that are need to advance: energy storage and effiecient redistribution, running on an interconnected grid. This can set the basis for the next steps relatively quickly. (some slow the progression of the kardashev scale but is most dependant on the collective learning and the access to education to propel development in line with Moore’s law)

The key development technology is nuclear fusion. Some speculate that controlling the power of a star is the next step in this energy progression but it’s unrealistic, if we want to live on this planet. We get energy and light from our star, blocking it would be a foolish endeavour for more energy, to fuel our lives. This is the reason that we don’t find alien megastructures, because this is the ideology that underwrites our personal need for control and it makes sense to our social mind-set. Which is a shame, because it’s a science based strategy to satisfy the needs of our growth and development. Nuclear fusion, offers us an unlimited power source when developed to the point of efficiency, instead of trying to swarm our sun with a solar array then transmitting the energy back to our planet. A more efficient way to facilitate our needs is to develop grids of fusion reactors on planetary satellites, like the moon and other planets. We could potentially use the same energy transfer systems that a solar array would utilize and build it using autonomous robots, just like we would use to make a solar array. Some people are proposing using autonomous robots to cannibalize mercury for materials to build the solar swarm, we could use this same technology on asteroids and the host planets to build the systems for the fusion network. A system of storage and electromagnetics would be needed to transfer energy on the energy production system before sending to back to earth. Some will argue that nuclear fusion requires more speciality materials. However, with the development of a renewable grid and a global resource distribution system, materials vital to our needs would be a priority in collective use. As nuclear fusion is developed, artificial transmutation development is a coinciding technological advancement that can facilitate the material needs as well.

Just like the solar swarm there are technological barriers, but this has an advantage from a settlement perspective as well. We could colonize these production planets by either partial dismantling the grid or building on top of the infrastructure to create a self-sufficient settlement without the need for the development of a power source or system. We don’t need to colonize another planet as much as we need to develop protection measures of this one by cohesive social targets and a functioning international community with survival and life enrichment goals not economic ones. Protecting our planet can be coupled with protecting these energy satellites with spacecrafts (manned or unmanned) in an elongated elliptical orbit around our solar system assets. The idea of these types of projects are contingent with the mindset of a global citizenship and identity. This cannot work under a system of private resources and individualist drive. The factors that limit humanity’s continuity are the separation of what we commonly need to live and succeed, projects like this require an understanding that we survive together and the practical actions that support this ideology. Ideology without like action is not systemic thought, it is propaganda. Population will only be a factor in planetary migration if we continue to live in an inequitable society.

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