4 ms·
If "absolutely no way" is everyday hyperbole for "I think it's unlikely" then sure, I think that's reasonable. It would need a break in current trends. 60 year
by abecedarius 6y ago
If "absolutely no way" is everyday hyperbole for "I think it's unlikely" then sure, I think that's reasonable. It would need a break in current trends.
60 years is the interval between Zuse's first Turing-complete relay computer and the popping of the dotcom bubble. Or between the Wright flyer and Project Gemini. Outer space has ridiculously more resources available than Earth surface, making it economically irresistible. Powerful economics plus 60 years of development can equal... a lot, as I said to start this subthread. Mars itself is not very attractive, but if space happens bigtime then even a sideshow can also happen.
100% self-sustaining would be unlikely (there's no real point in the last increment towards that), but colonies on Earth always had trade too.
- jacquesm 6y agoThey had trade because they could. A Mars colony has to be self sustaining otherwise it will simply vanish at some point. For trade to work the cost to trade has to be acceptable.
- abecedarius 6y agoThink of a world with many orders of magnitude more space travel, at an energy cost on the same order as the net energy difference between source and destination (which can be negative depending on net flow). Is that a world of autarkies? No, except where people prize autarky for its own sake.