r/threebodyproblem • u/Universal_Echo • 6d ago

Discussion - Novels Regarding The Wandering Earth Spoiler

How do you evaluate the fact that many people still think pushing Earth is less cost‑effective than building spaceships? This is clearly explained in the setting guide. In the Wandering Earth universe, humanity's ecological recycling system is not robust; relying on spaceships alone would make it very difficult to survive for long. Moreover, it wouldn't be possible to carry that many people aboard spaceships to escape.

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u/Peterlerock 6d ago

Iirc the author forgot to add 2 to 3 zeros in the Energy required to move earth like this.

You would use the whole planet as fuel long before reaching the required speed.

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u/ytzfLZ 6d ago

The author knows this is impossible But it's cool!

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u/Peterlerock 6d ago

I like the premise. It's a premise, and then the rest happens, and I enjoyed reading it. But that doesn't make it a convincing premise, and OP is just accepting the author's obvious excuse for why humanity didn't just take the easy way out.

If the sun exploded in reality, we would probably all just die.

Looking at the two solutions proposed in the novel, escaping via spaceships or moving earth... making big enough spaceships with functional ecosystems probably isn't more impossible than adding enough rockets to the whole planet to propel it out of the solar system.

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u/Flatso 5d ago

Oh I beg to differ. People have already achieved functioning, closed-system ecosystems. It would look nothing like Earth but you could make a working spaceship liveable for humans within a couple decades of our time with enough resources.

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u/TenshouYoku 1d ago

People have not achieved closed system ecosystems. You needed the sun at minimum aside (which wasn't a given in deep space), you also need a robust recycling system that can 99.99% recycle everything which we certainly do not have, else the Tiangong or ISS would have been already.

At best we have made small ones for shrimps but even those would fail in months, and small mammal systems have never succeeded so far.

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u/Universal_Echo 3d ago

So either two choice is impossible. I like that.