04-25-2015, 12:33 AM
Time is a very valuable commodity in an advanced civilisation; other valuable commodities are energy, raw materials and processing power. These last three can each be converted into the other, with varying degrees of difficulty, but time is a little more difficult to convert.
Even a self-replicating system goes through a period of slow growth at first, when it seems for a long time nothing much is happening, then a lot happens at once. A very large process like terraforming an inhospitable planet like Venus would pass through a long phase when nothing much seems to be happening. During this time the colonists could concentrate on the smewhat lower-hanging fruit of the construction of modestly-sized habitats elsewhere.
Even a self-replicating system goes through a period of slow growth at first, when it seems for a long time nothing much is happening, then a lot happens at once. A very large process like terraforming an inhospitable planet like Venus would pass through a long phase when nothing much seems to be happening. During this time the colonists could concentrate on the smewhat lower-hanging fruit of the construction of modestly-sized habitats elsewhere.