[ExI] Oil will never run out

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sunday 29 June 2008, Stefano Vaj wrote:
> Thus, the real issue is to have plenty of cheap energy available.
> Once you have that, oil stops being a problem altogether.

Yep. This is where the idea of acquiring energy from increased surface 
area with either photosynthetic organisms or just plain old solar array 
fields comes into play. I had the fortunate opportunity to meet with an 
individual from the Texas Department of Land a few weeks ago. There's 
tons of land in West Texas that is completely unused and unkept 
because, well, it's Texas and it inhales vigorously. Apparently the 
State is considering using this land for 10-by-10 miles of solar 
arrays. I'll have to double check and get some contacts on this.

But for something more sustainable, and more usable, I don't see why we 
can't convert large 3D volumes of mass in space into 2D surface area 
for our use. The main problem is the installation of relevant factories 
and maintenance machines, as long as the machines can build more 
surface area. It doesn't have to self-replicate, but that would be very 
useful in this situation.

- Bryan
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