Depleting oil means we're never leaving this planet

don't need oil for rocket fuel as others have said, plus we can make bio diesel and shit, it's just more expensive

fuel is like the cheapest part of launching rockets though

Petroleum might be needed to support an economy that can keep the basic needs of the people within it satisfied enough for space exploration to not be seen as a waste of resources.

Plastics, cars, the majority of manufacturing processes, synthetic rubber, farming equipment, and the majority of electricity production all rely on fossil fuels. Take that away and I think space exploration would be the last thing on anyone's mind, user.

We have tech now to make plastic from organic matter.

Everything that petroleum offers can be done using something else. It will be more expensive in the short term, but prices come down pretty quickly as better methods are made and demand rises.

People in this thread think petroleum is only used for fuel .... sigh.

Geologist here. At our current rate of consumption it would take about 500 years to deplete all our oil. That's not the problem. The problem is that it will very soon become more and more difficult to draw oil from the ground. Peak oil will hit us in less than 20 years (unless it has already, we won't know till we're past the peak that we hit it) meaning we're pulling less and less oil from the ground than we need to fulfill growing demand.

And that doesn't even count coal. If the Middle East is the world's oil supplier the United States is the world's coal supplier. The amount of coal in the US is insane, we could burn coal for 2000 years and not run out and coal can be converted to oil (although at great expense). Nobody is projecting that we'll ever run out of oil and coal ever. The problem is again returning cost. It will become more and more expensive to dig it out of the ground and we'll stop digging it out long before our supply runs out because of that.

So for extremely important world projects such as hopefully the space program will be, we'll be able to use all the petroleum we need to get it off the ground.

Petroleum isn't needed. We could use nuclear power to produce fuel, if we had no other options. Solar looks like it's becoming the better option, providing more energy for less effort, and with less of the worries nuclear brings. In fact, solar's on the path to simply outcompete fossil fuels.

Carbon capture would be good enough to use if it were necessary, and we could avoid its costs for most applications, with hydrogen or ammonia fuel for aviation, and electric cars, trucks, trains, and ships. If the carbon needs (for chemical synthesis) are low enough, we can use biological sources, otherwise we can get it out of carbonate minerals or extract it from the air chemically (baseline option is to get it from the air with sodium hydroxide solution, making sodium carbonate, then transfer it by reacting with calcium hydroxide to make insoluble calcium carbonate and sodium hydroxide, then calcining that to get carbon dioxide and calcium oxide, which you add to water to get calcium hydroxide again, but there are much more efficient methods being developed, like an ion exchange resin that captures CO2 from air passively, then simply releases it when you add water). Once you have CO2 and hydrogen, you can synthesize whatever hydrocarbons or alcohols you want with known chemistry.

rocket fuel is hydrogen mixed with an oxygen, water contains both and they can be easily separated through hydrolysis

>op is literally stupider than a 4th grader

>"Geologist here"
>dumb-as-a-rock peak oil kookery
Somehow I am skeptical of your credentials.

Did you somehow miss the fracking revolution? The oil gets harder to get, the technology gets better at bringing the oil out. We're not going to be troubled by some shortage within the next few decades.

Oil production peaking and declining isn't going to happen because the oil's too hard to get, but because we're going to have cheaper sources of energy. Solar's a semiconductor technology advancing on its own version of Moore's Law. Some biological solar examples (plants, algae) have energy payback times measured in hours, and that's chemical energy synthesized using captured atmospheric carbon. It won't be long before solar's so fully automated and immediately self-supporting that the only significant investment will be designating the areas to be covered in solar collectors.

see

I wish batteries were fucking cheap and durable.

>we

You die in a flesh suit and do not benefit from a plan that involves "saving the environment", building big space ships in the future or culling 95% of the population in WW3.

uh oh class retard alert

hurr durr what is RP-1 and the Russian equivalent

Yeah, you be the one who tries to get every big corporation to overhaul their manufacturing processes, factories and distribution chain to accommodate renewables.

While you're at it, try to get any democratic country that wants to be competitive in the global economy to use taxpayer money to completely overhaul their infrastructure.

I'll wait.

In an ideal world people would do what they should do, but they don't -- they do what they can get away with. Game theory wins every time, and it's much less resource intensive to extract energy than it is to create it. We're going to wring the earth dry of every drop of petrol and mine it hollow of every ounce of coal before ecologists get their day in the sun. When they do, that sun is going to be blistering hot.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

>Yeah, you be the one who tries to get every big corporation to overhaul their manufacturing processes, factories and distribution chain to accommodate renewables.

We were talking about how oil runs out or becomes too expensive to dig out and there would be no plastic and all the rest. Do you really thing corporations will just pack up and go home?

We will, we'll make it Mars and then from Mars to the rest of the system and then we'll turn our attentions toward Alpha Centauri and getting there within a semi-reasonable time frame.
Just you wait.

Before we run out of oil and fissile materials we should have developed fusion. If not then it doesn't matter they are running out anyway.

uranium is common in the Earth's crust

You can make methane very easily, even at home.
is this a fart joke?

>mfw I'm literally the worst

...and in the ocean. It's already cheaper to extract seawater uranium to run conventional, non-breeder reactors than it is to breed plutonium or U233 fuel.

We're not leaving this planet because we would rather fight each other than work together.

I agree with you that eventually there will be a break-even point.

I think we differ on when that break-even point will be, though. With all the new extraction technologies that have come out and the latest political tide that has rolled in (no more subsidies and the possibility of a carbon tax is almost null now) recently I'd place my bet on "not very soon."

I hope you're right and I'm wrong, user.

a thing that can be synthesized artificially
also not the only fuel in existence

>I hope you're right and I'm wrong, user.

They are already developing the technologies.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic

If you go through a list of petroleum products, all of them have non-petroleum alternatives. People are cheap, want cheap and want to make money. Since petroleum is versatile and energy dense for the most part, it is merely the cheaper alternative.

Let me tell, I really really really refrained from making a brap-meme when posting that. Regardless, a DIY home biogas digester is absurdly easy to make. You literally just put shit in a bottle with some hay, straw, or other such cellulose. Literally making jenkem, except you can actually use it for fuel and fertilizer, instead of making a fool of your local sheriff's office.

>People are cheap, want cheap and want to make money. Since petroleum is versatile and energy dense for the most part, it is merely the cheaper alternative.

Thanks for making my point for me. It all comes down to that break-even point. Until then, people with money simply aren't going to invest in the tech because it's a stupid investment.

The technology needs to be able to survive and compete in the marketplace (or be heavily subsidized). Maybe that will happen when the available supply of fossil fuels goes down and alternatives look more attractive. Maybe that will happen when the alternatives become so plentiful that they become cheaper than the fossil fuels. Who knows? But then, and only then, will there be your fabled "Green Revolution."

I'm not holding my breath though.

Solar's already the cheapest energy source for powering air conditioners in hot, sunny places. It and storage methods need to keep getting cheaper for it to win at baseload and dispatchable power, but it's going in that direction.

Remember that the world isn't all one big market. There are borders and transportation costs. Moving fuel around is fairly costly, and governments are loath to allow money to be sent out of their country for basic needs which can be satisfied domestically. If they don't maintain trade balance, it's slow economic destruction. If a country doesn't have good fossil fuel resources of its own, it's motivated to invest in alternative energy.

So... You guys are basically stating that economic growth leads to economic growth... BUT... Economic growth also halts economic growth?
Econometric graph series when?

>The technology needs to be able to survive and compete in the marketplace

That's a moot point since we are still talking about oil going well past that tipping point. It isn't like we will forget the other technologies. We don't really need to talk about it pre-tipping point. The main discussion point being that we have the tech to completely replace everything oil can do.

nah, there are other energy sources on the planet that we can tap.

>Rocket fuel is not oil based

correct... much of it is hydrogen and oxygen.. or methane and oxygen.

unless you are talking about Hypergolics

Just want to point out that I'm lretty sure most produced H2 comes from hydrocarbons
CH4 + 2 H2O > CO2 + 4 H2

Obviously, but the brainlets here can't understand how anything works.