How New Space Settlements Avoid Early Collapse

Space colonies may reach the stars… then collapse. From fragile ecosystems to genetic drift and incentive failure, how do new settlements survive long enough to become civilizations?

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Credits:

How New Space Settlements Avoid Early Collapse

Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur

Music by Epidemic Sound: http://nebula.tv/epidemic

Stellardrone & Chris Zabriskie

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images

Chapters

0:00 Intro

0:17 The Aurora Effect

2:52 Ecological Fragility and the Minimum Viable Ecosystem

5:29 Mutational Load and Genetic Drift

8:05 The Information Umbilical

10:21 Incentive Collapse

13:15 The Wait Calculation

15:35 Engineering Stable Colonies

21:38 Mad Kings

22:49 From Fragile Outposts to Stable Civilizations

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