2 ms·
He doesn't think from first principles and is arrogant enough to say never, i want my 5 minutes back. Water in the form of ice is the most important resource on
by MartianDwarf 5y ago
He doesn't think from first principles and is arrogant enough to say never, i want my 5 minutes back. Water in the form of ice is the most important resource on asteroids just use some mirrors and drone swarms. You can also try to encapsulate an asteroid and build on top of it with self replicating systems. Now you can dismiss this as scifi but at the rate of advancements in ML and control. 200-300 years of exponential or linear growth doesn't seem unreasonable. Also, there is no reason you have to use chemical rockets, thats obviously a dead end. Building up on the moon and mars will allow for easy liftoff due to the low gravity allowing for more advanced propulsion systems.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoAnd we have the technology to get to a large asteroid in a month, from the frikkin 1960s: Pulse nuclear orion ships can have payloads of SEVERAL MILLION TONS. The issue was the detonating of the bombs in the atmosphere for initial launch stages, but as you say, launch them from the Moon. Near earth asteroid mining may be key to making a planetary space economy worthwhile.