4 ms·

What are some example applications that could change life overnight, besides planet-wide connectivity?

somenameforme 2y ago
I'm not fond of speaking in specifics. The reason is that everything I am saying is, to the best of my knowledge, correct but the results sounds just so difficult to imagine. It's something like the opposite of cognitive dissonance. I know what I'm saying is true and it also leads to other things that I believe to be true, but the result is so difficult to imagine, that I have difficulty even believing myself. So it's quite odd! But taking things in the abstract, single digit prices per kg to space would transform the Moon (or space in general) to just another place to build stuff and expand out into. Obviously there are technological hurdles but nothing particularly challenging, especially in contexts where we could have regular traffic flow to/from Earth. The possibilities of this rapidly enter into the sci-fi domain. But there seems no real reason for that "fi" suffix to really exist in these scenarios. So again, it's all just quite weird. If things work out as they seem increasingly likely to, then are all living through what will be the most critical segue in humanity's history to date, and perhaps ever. So far as we know space really is the final frontier, and once we can start expanding outward into that, humanity's existence will be radically shifted, and our perpetuation as a species will also be all but completely guaranteed.
kaliqt 2y ago
To be brief: Large orbital habitats, like Elysium. Asteroid, moon, and Mars mining. Colonization of the aforementioned, space trade and shipping between Mankind's Interstellar Empire. Demand will rise for energy production and terraforming, all kinds of things will boom. All of a sudden we'll have 100,000x more resources per man than we have now. Everything changes on that track. Everything.

I'm not fond of speaking in specifics. The reason is that everything I am saying is, to the best of my knowledge, correct but the results sounds just so difficult to imagine. It's something like the opposite of cognitive dissonance. I know what I'm saying is true and it also leads to other things that I believe to be true, but the result is so difficult to imagine, that I have difficulty even believing myself. So it's quite odd! But taking things in the abstract, single digit prices per kg to space would transform the Moon (or space in general) to just another place to build stuff and expand out into. Obviously there are technological hurdles but nothing particularly challenging, especially in contexts where we could have regular traffic flow to/from Earth. The possibilities of this rapidly enter into the sci-fi domain. But there seems no real reason for that "fi" suffix to really exist in these scenarios. So again, it's all just quite weird. If things work out as they seem increasingly likely to, then are all living through what will be the most critical segue in humanity's history to date, and perhaps ever. So far as we know space really is the final frontier, and once we can start expanding outward into that, humanity's existence will be radically shifted, and our perpetuation as a species will also be all but completely guaranteed.

kaliqt 2y ago

To be brief: Large orbital habitats, like Elysium. Asteroid, moon, and Mars mining. Colonization of the aforementioned, space trade and shipping between Mankind's Interstellar Empire. Demand will rise for energy production and terraforming, all kinds of things will boom. All of a sudden we'll have 100,000x more resources per man than we have now. Everything changes on that track. Everything.