4 ms·
The ratios between 650AU, 165AU, and 0.01AU are somewhat moot. In 1957 Sputnik 1 had an apogee of ~900km from the Earth. By 1969 NASA was sending rockets ~385
by Teever 2y ago
The ratios between 650AU, 165AU, and 0.01AU are somewhat moot.
In 1957 Sputnik 1 had an apogee of ~900km from the Earth.
By 1969 NASA was sending rockets ~385000km to the moon.
By 1979 Voyager 1 & 2 were reaching Jupiter ~5AU from Earth.
We went from 900km to 5AU in 22 years.
If SpaceX achieves their stated goals of lowering $/kg to orbit and rapid re-usability with Starship it will unlock things like asteroid/lunar mining and space based manufacturing which will allow the construction of the kind of infrastructure needed to make distances like 650AU achievable in reasonable time frames.
- hehehheh 2y agoTrue but I'd be more convinced by an argument based on tech and engineering constraints than extrapolating a progress line.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoLow hanging fruit is easier to pluck. It might be that we cannot progress much further without consuming so many resources that Earth is left an uninhabitable husk.
- Teever 2y agoI agree totally. That is precisely why we must transition to space based resource extraction and manufacturing. There are practically infinite resources at our fingertips on the moon, the asteroid belts and eventually the gas giants. What we need to unlock this are the means to economically launch a minimum viable self replicating infrastructure into space to take advantage of this. The feedback loops that will ensue should we succeed will allow us to save Earth ecology, radically transform the human condition, and unlock the ability to explore the universe in ways that we can only imagine.