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This an amazing opportunity to develop our capabilities and deliver real value to earth at the same time. Geo-engineering on this scale is not without its risks
by xupybd 3y ago
This an amazing opportunity to develop our capabilities and deliver real value to earth at the same time. Geo-engineering on this scale is not without its risks but the pay off could be huge. We could buy time to lower our carbon emissions without huge economic impacts.
If we get lunar mining up and running that opens up a world of space based resources at far cheaper than anything we could launch from earth. With a mass driver and solar power we could avoid the need for propellants for launch.
Once you have an economic reason to be up there getting there will become much cheaper. That will enable a new wave of scientific exploration.
- rbanffy 3y agoWith more or less the same tech, we can make Venus inhabitable. Would take a long time to cool and a lot more sunshade to cover the Sun, but once we start making them on the Moon and dispatch them with a magnetic rail launcher, it becomes a lot easier. A similar technology could shield Mars from solar radiation and reduce exposure at the surface (at least from the Sun). If we could make it into a lensing system, we could focus protons or Alpha particles from the Sun into a small region of the planetary disc and slowly re-add hydrogen back into the planet’s atmosphere.