4 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
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Comment by Zzarchov at 25/01/2020 at 16:41 UTC
4 upvotes, 2 direct replies
The amounts needed are literally astronomical in scale, and easily replenished by taking water and carbon from elsewhere with the import of goods.
Comment by StoneTemplePilates at 25/01/2020 at 19:20 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If you are debating a theoretical scenario where it makes sense to ship garbage to another planet for disposal, then you have to make the assumption that our level of tech makes it trivial to transfer resources between planets. So basically, it doesn't matter if we lose some water because we'll get more.
Comment by BigBossBobRoss at 25/01/2020 at 20:10 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think what people are suggesting isn't organic waste, but rather inorganic waste that nature cannot get rid of without some level of intervention by sapient species or a really large amount of time, like radioactive waste (I've heard arguments of throwing stuff that we absolutely cannot use as an energy source into a sun, which in my opinion is more wasteful then dumping on an extremely inhospitable planet like Mercury).
Though you do bring up an interesting idea. What would potential problems be if we had an organic waste planet? Would outsourcing composting to such a world be detrimental to the world of origin's organic chemical cycles? Or if humanity ever became an interstellar species, would the amount of organic chemicals entering and leaving the planet be roughly net zero?