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I'll see your exact opposite view with with my own exact opposite view. Privatizing Space will do the same thing for it that privatizing the Internet did for a
by crusso 14y ago
I'll see your exact opposite view with with my own exact opposite view.
Privatizing Space will do the same thing for it that privatizing the Internet did for all of us. It will take a government-pioneered oddity that was out of reach of the masses and explore millions of ways to make it of financial benefit to the entrepreneurs who can get there first. Like with the Internet, society will be pulled along in the vortex of the Race to Space. Space will become accessible for a price and in ways that would have been inconceivable a decade before.
The technical challenges with space travel are much greater and so the time before we reach the exponential part of the curve is further away, but when the critical mass of Space travel technology has been reached it will be like the Internet in the 1990's. The Internet had been around for 20 years and only governmental and academic types even knew anything about it. Within a few years of its commercialization, its use and uses had exploded. We went from the average joe not knowing anything about it to seeing an abundance of commercials on television for it within just a couple of years.
I mention the Internet, but the pattern is one that you can see in the adoption of transatlantic sailing, rail travel, electricity, automobiles, etc. Space travel will be no different.
- impldefined 14y agoThe massive difference between the Internet and space (at least in my current opinion) is that the internet represents instant communication and it didn't take long to figure out how that can make money. Space on the other hand, what opportunities does it provide? Putting things in orbit, that's good. Maybe mining asteroids, but then what? Perhaps better solar power collection or something, but what potential profits would lie in colonizing mars, for example? Trying to travel outside of our solar system? I'm not an anti-capitalist, I just find that often when it comes to capitalism we tend to have "I've got a hammer" syndrome. It's not the best solution for every possible problem.