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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