Wood will probably be considered a luxury building material, like marble, when we colonise other star systems. amirite?

You obviously never played Rimworld :)

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Fearing googling Rimworld

by Anonymous 3 years ago

It's safe, popular cartoony space videogame.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Ah yes, so cartoony. Let me just chop off the legs of my prisoners to prevent them from running.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

who hurt you?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

The slave traders wearing human leather hats :(

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Oh the same happened in Blade Runner 2049

by Anonymous 3 years ago

And many other sci-fi/cyberpunk universes. Like Altered Carbon, Cyberpunk 2020 or The Expense.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

The Expense lol

by Anonymous 3 years ago

It's a hardcore syfy accounting show. Pretty cool.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Interplanetary travel ain't cheap these days

by Anonymous 3 years ago

And Dune, where they talk about the great beams of wood in the building and how expensive they were.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Yeah, I read a lot of sci-fi and it's a common theme

by Anonymous 3 years ago

I'm still waiting for the spinoff : Doctor Badger's Cabinet of Mysteries

by Anonymous 3 years ago

We can currently grow meat without the animal with just cells from it. By the time we are a interstellar species I'm sure we'll figure out lab grown wood.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Guys we can already grow wood

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Yeah what would even be the point of "lab grown wood"

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Presumably more rapid growth, less space and water use, ability to uniformly produce straight or formed-to-shape pieces, etc.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

I guess we could cut down the growth some, but we already use fast growing pine trees to get the majority of our construction lumber, which take between 5-10 years to fully mature.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

If we're talking about using artificial methods to grow slabs of wood instead of entire trees, I would think space savings and being able to grow types of wood where the climate wouldn't otherwise allow. Probably speed as well.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Science bitch!

by Anonymous 3 years ago

I keep my lab in the back yard. For space.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

The wood was inside us the whole time.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Pretty sure we can grow trees without the animal already

by Anonymous 3 years ago

I think the hard part, but not impossible is the minor imperfections. It's not just straight grains. The little waves are what make it beautiful. The random width from some dry, some wet summers, short and long winters

by Anonymous 3 years ago

If we can travel between the stars I'm sure we can create random algorithms for wood grain character.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

This guy computes!

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Just give it a lil shake

by Anonymous 3 years ago

true, but people like stuff just because its rare or forbidden even if its impractical or worse or more expensive. Just how people pay more money for a celebrities belonging. people will pay extra for "authentic wood"

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Honestly it's already coming to that

by Anonymous 3 years ago

We are colonizing other star-systems? Last I checked the nearest star over was 100,000 *years* away.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Warp travel duh, have you not seen the star trek documentaries

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Na we need Solomon Epstein's Drive.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Though a Martian research station on Phoebe would also help

by Anonymous 3 years ago

That escalated quickly. It reaches out it reaches out it reaches out.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

hey does anyone wanna check what's going on on Eros rn?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Hold on, before we do that, imagine the impact a behemoth would have

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Mars has Phobos; Saturn and F.R.I.E.N.D.S. have Phoebe.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

The ones with Tim Allen - right?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

You mean the historical documents?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

He meant that with the prices of lumber currently it's already becoming a luxury

by Anonymous 3 years ago

*grabs paper and pencil* have you heard of something called a wormhole?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

He means wood is becoming a luxury and a rarity, not the latter.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

No way! *Really?* Because we use up all the jungle-wood? Or because of increased profit, or because bio-fuel is on the rise? I think most lumber is from planted forrests these days?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Don't quote me but I think it's increased demand due to home building and renovation combined with processers unable to keep up. There is enough timber but not enough lumber

by Anonymous 3 years ago

With a single 2x4 costing $6+, I'd say we're already on track for homebuilding being only for the wealthy.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

We are going with steel beams now instead of wood for our reno

by Anonymous 3 years ago

FYI, steel has increased in price at almost the same ratio

by Anonymous 3 years ago

You'll be safe against jet fuel at least

by Anonymous 3 years ago

I strongly believe that not just building but holding a mortgage will be something only capable of the higher class sooner than we think. I already expect my kid to only be able to rent as opposed to holding a mortgage whenever it comes time to find a home for them.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

It really isn't all that hard to find an affordable house outside of huge areas like NYC/LA.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Building your own home from scratch is 100% for the wealthy, wtf?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

That's just temporary though because there's a shortage due to, you know, the global pandemic. Give it two years and they'll be about back to normal.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

IF we don't go extinct before colonizing another system

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Actually, there is a way around this... 1. Make cyborg implants for all humans to improve overall health and longevity. 2. Give birth to AI, effectively joining the entire human race into a hive mind. 3. ??? 4. WE ARE BORG. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

And hail zorp

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Or if that theory about genetic "rust" is true, we won't make it that far as we will not be intelligent enough

by Anonymous 3 years ago

What are you referring too ive never heard of genetic rust

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Return to monke

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Basically the theory in Idiocracy?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

I am a molecular biologists and have not heard of this "theory", what does it actually say?

by Anonymous 3 years ago

I imagine though that trees will be used for terroforming, or that other oxygen rich planets will have some similar plant.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

This is also why amber is like the rarest natural "gemstone" (to our knowledge at least) in the universe: you need life to create it, and even on a planet teeming with life, it is still pretty rare.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Space wood!

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Go to home depot and look at the price of wood. The future is now old man

by Anonymous 3 years ago

This is one thing they talk about in 'The Expanse'. All of the space ships are like steel or foam or carbon fiber, etc. One of the characters is like a super rich guy and his space ship is called opulent because he has a wooden desk and trim and such.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

You are an exceedingly optimistic person. Wood is going to be a luxury building material on Earth at the rate we're going. The idea that we're actually going to make it to another solar system is laughable.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

There's more astatine than wood in the universe.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Price of wood is already up, construction is more expensive, eventually if it continues to go up construction may not be pheasable in the future. Water is also being traded as a luxury, I say we're pretty much screwed for the future

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Kinda like Jakobs weapons in the borderlands game series.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Coming from a carpenter, with current prices it pretty much already is lol

by Anonymous 3 years ago

the price of lumber has tripled

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Umm.. we can grow wood.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Not necessarily on another planet. And you need YEARS to grow enough useable wood for construction. If the environment is hospitable to that. It's no guarantee the planet would have native "trees." You definitely don't have the luxury of transporting processed lumber on initial colonization. And you'd need biome space for actual food crops in a sealed environment. First generation structures on colonized planets would probably be concrete. Planets will have rocks. And if they don't have water we couldn't live there anyway.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Bamboo grows pretty quick, tho...

by Anonymous 3 years ago

like building a wooden minecraft house in the desert

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Wood would be considered a luxury in any other place of our own Solar system

by Anonymous 3 years ago

do u know how expensive is wood right now

by Anonymous 3 years ago

So there's a recent journal article suggesting that phosphorus, not carbon is the big limiter on potential life. Long and involved article but short version is: All life uses phosphorus. Plenty of the rest of life's chemistry is found across the galaxy, but strangely not phosphorus.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

Clearly you haven't been in any construction business now. Lumber prices are ridiculous at the moment because of demand. So much so that previously higher end building materials, like Trex for deck and patio builds, are comparable or cheaper than using wood which was the cheaper alternative up until now.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

We'd be lucky to colonize a single star system, even just our own.

by Anonymous 3 years ago

At this rate, there won't be any wood left. There's going to be nothing left because corporations and billionaires give no fuks. Oh and people in general.

by Anonymous 3 years ago