A polity has developed a policy of shooting off ALL waste products from their planet, not to a garbage planet, but to the center of their galaxy, to a black hole. Instead of recycling. It gets interesting when they start running out of resources in their solar system to make new materials, because waste goes to the black hole, instead of being recycled. -- Anon Guest
[AN: Even at ludicrous speeds, someone could catch that thing before it even reaches a black hole. Stellar distances are wild]
There's "Waste not, want not," there's "Conspicuous consumption," and there's whatever the Ceslars have going on. The have a very unique approach to waste disposal, and a similarly unique use for rocketry.
They launch their waste towards the black holes at the centre of their galaxy.
One might easily believe that the Ceslars would run out of material to launch, let alone fuel to launch it with, but their home system has been abundant in resources for most of their existence. It's one of those classic stopthink[1] solutions that work right up until the moment it starts biting a lot of behinds.
The Ceslars have been stripping their entire solar system of resources since they invented space travel. Even the disasters have been turned towards profit. Gas giant run out of gas? Great! Now they had access to all the minerals at its core!
Asteroids thrown out of orbit? Excellent! Now they had all the rare-earth minerals they could swim in[2].
It wasn't until millennia after they began launching waste at black holes that they realised their mistake. Their system had finally begun to run dry, and they lacked the wherewithal to recycle what little they had left.
In desperation, they sent missions after their own garbage. Track it down, round it up, and send it back so the Ceslars could work from scratch in regards to reduce, re-use, and recycle.
Alas, the Kholva had beat them to it.
As an infant space-faring race, they found the first microplanetoid of garbage and towed it gleefully to their home planet. They had, for millennia, been benefitting from the Ceslar's waste.
It was something of a shock to discover that the things thrown away were advancing someone else beyond realms once thought impossible.
"So let us get this straight," said Kholva. "You have been throwing things away without a thought for thousands of years, and now you want it back? Tell me. How did you plan to get it out of the black hole?"
"We were hoping to catch it before it went in," confessed Ceslar. "We had devised several means to send it back on a close trajectory and thereby reclaim it." They had graphs to display.
"Pretty," said Kholva. "Too bad for you that we found it first, isn't it? We've had hereditary salvage rights since the era of the First Bounty."
"That was our first bounty, thank you!"
"You didn't want it. We did. We've had dibs."
Negotiations almost fell to war. Fortunately, the Kholva were smarter than that.
"How about we just share. Knowledge, resources, everything. We have a whole harvestworld made out of your organic debris. We can even teach you how to build one of your own."
"Out of POOP? Euwie," cringed Ceslar.
"Let's begin with the basics of the biological cycle..." sighed Kholva.
[1] Stopthink: the practice of seeking easy answers without looking at the long term effect. For a simple example, imagine a settlement near a large freshwater lake. To them, the lake goes on "forever" so it can also hold their waste "forever". They stop thinking about it until they wonder why everyone's getting cholera these days.
[2] For the literal-minded cogniscents reading this, it is not recommended that one attempts to swim in rare earth minerals. They are far too chunky for such activities.
[Image by Aldebaran S on Unsplash]
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