3 ms·

Wasn’t the lynchpin of For all Mankind was that there was some type of material on the moon we could mine for energy like oil and that funded future endeavours

ghaff 3y ago
The "unobtainium" thing was at least a handwave that this is all less outlandish than it seems. Still, the earlier seasons seemed more natural extrapolations of this timeline with relatively few changes.
BuyMyBitcoins 3y ago
The show also hand waived the invention of fusion in the 1980’s.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Yeah, they sort of had a maximum timeline set by what they could reasonably do with some makeup for the cast and them not being unreasonably old for their roles. But telling the story they wanted probably required an unnatural rate of technology advance over that period of time.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  It's interesting because there is broad agreement that we could have had fusion power if we had actually invested in it, which could have more plausibly happened if we were also investing in a space race (and so society was more science and engineering focused). In the show they claim that the invention of fusion was the product of one smart guy, which isn't how it would have gone, but the actual presence of fusion seems plausible to me.
Symmetry 3y ago
It was Helium-3. Potentially useful for certain types of fusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Candidate_fuels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Candidate_fu... And maybe cooling certain types of quantum computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Moonshine (2010) remains the definitive write-up on (against) Helium-3 for me, from sci-fi notable Charles Stross. > He 3 is not magic high-energy pixie dust. And in the context of the space colonization debate it should be seen for what it is — a placeholder for the alchemist's stone that will turn the money-hole of a lunar colony into a profit centre: an extractable natural resource that can't be found on earth and is valuable enough to mine elsewhere. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/moonshine.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/moonshi...

ghaff 3y ago

The "unobtainium" thing was at least a handwave that this is all less outlandish than it seems. Still, the earlier seasons seemed more natural extrapolations of this timeline with relatively few changes.

BuyMyBitcoins 3y ago

The show also hand waived the invention of fusion in the 1980’s.

ghaff 3y ago
Yeah, they sort of had a maximum timeline set by what they could reasonably do with some makeup for the cast and them not being unreasonably old for their roles. But telling the story they wanted probably required an unnatural rate of technology advance over that period of time.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
It's interesting because there is broad agreement that we could have had fusion power if we had actually invested in it, which could have more plausibly happened if we were also investing in a space race (and so society was more science and engineering focused). In the show they claim that the invention of fusion was the product of one smart guy, which isn't how it would have gone, but the actual presence of fusion seems plausible to me.

Symmetry 3y ago

It was Helium-3. Potentially useful for certain types of fusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Candidate_fuels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Candidate_fu... And maybe cooling certain types of quantum computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Moonshine (2010) remains the definitive write-up on (against) Helium-3 for me, from sci-fi notable Charles Stross. > He 3 is not magic high-energy pixie dust. And in the context of the space colonization debate it should be seen for what it is — a placeholder for the alchemist's stone that will turn the money-hole of a lunar colony into a profit centre: an extractable natural resource that can't be found on earth and is valuable enough to mine elsewhere. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/moonshine.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/moonshi...