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Which breaks down the second there are civilians in space. Everyone who has control over a rocket engine has to a very good approximation a nuclear weapon. I i
by c9fee10d-96de 5y ago
Which breaks down the second there are civilians in space. Everyone who has control over a rocket engine has to a very good approximation a nuclear weapon.
I imagine that a future with a substantial space population will look very much like the past when the Steppe nomads could destroy more advanced civilization by just deciding they should.
The difference is that repopulating 10 billion people takes rather longer than the tens of millions that were usually killed in the past.
- MichaelZuo 5y agoI imagine for that reason all space activities involving any significant amount of mass will be conducted under the strict control of a military, or pseudo-military hierarchy. And also as part of a world polity as such control proliferates since even one crazed defector out of say a 1000 such ‘rocket engine controllers’ could destroy civilization on Earth, preventing any possibility of defection would override all other goals. A future where the equivalents of ‘Steppe nomads’ could throw around significant of mass would be a future where every habitable planet and fixed space facility would be slagged in short order, i.e. even more unstable and untenable.