In principle yes. With even present day technology at huge expense, and maybe more easily with far future technology.
You wouldn't need the Moon. Ceres is plenty big enough, there's enough material in Ceres for not just the entire population of the Earth, but all the plants, animals, everything except the ocean depths - the oceans would be shallower. But if you dismantled Ceres and made it into Stanford Toruses, including the cosmic radiation shielding which is the heaviest part of the settlements - you have enough material for 400 times the land area of the Earth - the tropical rain forests, deserts, Antarctica, Himalayas etc. There'd be no difficulty housing the entire population of the Earth.
(The seas or lakes would have to be shallow compared to Earth as there's surprisingly much water in the Earth's oceans: 1,335,000,000 cu km, volume of Ceres about 925.303 cu km, see Volumes of the World's Oceans from ETOPO1)
The main problem there is that it is far far easier to build habitats on the Earth itself than to build space habitats in orbit. You could build sea cities also floating in the sea, or cities in deserts, or cloud cities floating in the atmosphere (Buckminster Fuller's "Cloud nine") and they would all be far far easier to construct (don't need tons per square meter radiation shielding, and the air is automatically breathable).
It's hard to think of any reason that would make it sensible to do this however, as a way to house the population of the Earth. But it could be done in principle, yes. Or if our population hugely increases. Or if space settlement for some reason gets a lot easier than it is now.
One could make a start at this, but I think this as well as all space colonization attempts would just fail, unless there is some other reason to be in space rather than just to live there - just because it doesn't make sense to build in a place where it is very difficult to build houses, when there are far easier places to build them back on Earth. Unless there is a reason to be in space, some other reason than just to be there to live there.
It would be exciting and fun for the first thousand or so people surely. But once you have millions living there, it would just be a place people live like everywhere else, and easy to get into space for holidays or for fun, and then people would start making hard nosed decisions - do we live in space, or do we live in that much easier, less expensive, convenient place with free oxygen in the air, free cosmic radiation protection in the atmosphere and plants just grow in the ground etc and you can just walk anywhere you want etc. I don't think it makes a lot of sense at present to have billions or even millions in space settlements. But thousands even tens of thousands eventually, I can see that happening.
Also, there's another reason why I think space settlements are likely to be far smaller in total population than the Earth in near future - at least unless some technology (e.g. self replicating machines) gives parity between building in space and building on the Earth.
In the case of the Stanford Torus they hoped to pay for it with sale of solar power energy from space to the Earth. But a model like that obviously only works if you have most of the population still on the Earth willing to pay for some commodity from space that is worth the extra expense of living in space.
This could happen. E.g. platinum nowadays. Or solar power with thin film large kilometer scale mirrors reflecting the light back to a concentration plant in orbit (may be a low cost way of producing energy in space, solar panel farms in space make no sense nowadays as they are so much easier to construct on the Earth).
But that model can't support a billion people in space surely.
See also: Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths
You wouldn't need the Moon. Ceres is plenty big enough, there's enough material in Ceres for not just the entire population of the Earth, but all the plants, animals, everything except the ocean depths - the oceans would be shallower. But if you dismantled Ceres and made it into Stanford Toruses, including the cosmic radiation shielding which is the heaviest part of the settlements - you have enough material for 400 times the land area of the Earth - the tropical rain forests, deserts, Antarctica, Himalayas etc. There'd be no difficulty housing the entire population of the Earth.
(The seas or lakes would have to be shallow compared to Earth as there's surprisingly much water in the Earth's oceans: 1,335,000,000 cu km, volume of Ceres about 925.303 cu km, see Volumes of the World's Oceans from ETOPO1)
The main problem there is that it is far far easier to build habitats on the Earth itself than to build space habitats in orbit. You could build sea cities also floating in the sea, or cities in deserts, or cloud cities floating in the atmosphere (Buckminster Fuller's "Cloud nine") and they would all be far far easier to construct (don't need tons per square meter radiation shielding, and the air is automatically breathable).
It's hard to think of any reason that would make it sensible to do this however, as a way to house the population of the Earth. But it could be done in principle, yes. Or if our population hugely increases. Or if space settlement for some reason gets a lot easier than it is now.
One could make a start at this, but I think this as well as all space colonization attempts would just fail, unless there is some other reason to be in space rather than just to live there - just because it doesn't make sense to build in a place where it is very difficult to build houses, when there are far easier places to build them back on Earth. Unless there is a reason to be in space, some other reason than just to be there to live there.
It would be exciting and fun for the first thousand or so people surely. But once you have millions living there, it would just be a place people live like everywhere else, and easy to get into space for holidays or for fun, and then people would start making hard nosed decisions - do we live in space, or do we live in that much easier, less expensive, convenient place with free oxygen in the air, free cosmic radiation protection in the atmosphere and plants just grow in the ground etc and you can just walk anywhere you want etc. I don't think it makes a lot of sense at present to have billions or even millions in space settlements. But thousands even tens of thousands eventually, I can see that happening.
Also, there's another reason why I think space settlements are likely to be far smaller in total population than the Earth in near future - at least unless some technology (e.g. self replicating machines) gives parity between building in space and building on the Earth.
In the case of the Stanford Torus they hoped to pay for it with sale of solar power energy from space to the Earth. But a model like that obviously only works if you have most of the population still on the Earth willing to pay for some commodity from space that is worth the extra expense of living in space.
This could happen. E.g. platinum nowadays. Or solar power with thin film large kilometer scale mirrors reflecting the light back to a concentration plant in orbit (may be a low cost way of producing energy in space, solar panel farms in space make no sense nowadays as they are so much easier to construct on the Earth).
But that model can't support a billion people in space surely.
See also: Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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