Right: any culture so unsophisticated as to be unable to bang two nuclei together and get a ballistic alpha particle out will also fail to build any of that stu

Right: any culture so unsophisticated as to be unable to bang two nuclei together and get a ballistic alpha particle out will also fail to build any of that stuff. Any that is able will have no interest that stuff. The next stage of human evolution will be conducted out in the Kuiper belt, where the thermodynamically irreducible well of cold, the solidified gases, and the wide-open spaces beckon alluringly.