“if you can make it to orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere”
it’s a famous quote but i forgot who said it. it means that the most challenging part in building a rocket and flying anywhere, is building the rocket. like, once you have a functioning rocket, it doesn’t make much difference whether you use it to achieve orbit around Earth or whether you use it to fly to another planet. That’s why Earth’s orbit is actually a pretty useful target destination for testing whether the rocket works.
Well, if we crack full automation we could build superstructures. And if we can work on that kind of scale, we could even get crazy with it and do things like terra forming the moon
Even if resource inputs weren’t a problem, those are projects that one generation starts and different generation ends. “Full automation” isn’t gonna just magically speed up that process.
Of course it does. Full automation means robots that make robots from scratch. Which means we can play entirely outside the gravity well. Which means practically infinite resources
Exponential growth is hard for the human mind to comprehend. After a start up process, full automation would mean infinite scaling. It would ramp up over the course of a few years, and then it would be godlike power. A billion ships full of tireless workers, why not. We’re basically only restricted by energy at that point, and the sun is right there. It’ll take time to get to the belts and gas giants, but once they’re there then they can launch an endless stream of resources across the solar system. Hell, maybe you have the robots on board to do detail work in transit.
Megastructures are multi-generational projects. Superstructures might not be
It’s not space travel when they barely even leave the atmosphere.
“if you can make it to orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere”
it’s a famous quote but i forgot who said it. it means that the most challenging part in building a rocket and flying anywhere, is building the rocket. like, once you have a functioning rocket, it doesn’t make much difference whether you use it to achieve orbit around Earth or whether you use it to fly to another planet. That’s why Earth’s orbit is actually a pretty useful target destination for testing whether the rocket works.
K
A century is a long fuckin time for technology to remain completely stagnant. I stand by my statement.
And a century is a blip in the face of building a sustainable, long-term habitat anywhere else. So what if we have rockets, there’s nowhere to go.
Well, if we crack full automation we could build superstructures. And if we can work on that kind of scale, we could even get crazy with it and do things like terra forming the moon
Even if resource inputs weren’t a problem, those are projects that one generation starts and different generation ends. “Full automation” isn’t gonna just magically speed up that process.
Of course it does. Full automation means robots that make robots from scratch. Which means we can play entirely outside the gravity well. Which means practically infinite resources
Exponential growth is hard for the human mind to comprehend. After a start up process, full automation would mean infinite scaling. It would ramp up over the course of a few years, and then it would be godlike power. A billion ships full of tireless workers, why not. We’re basically only restricted by energy at that point, and the sun is right there. It’ll take time to get to the belts and gas giants, but once they’re there then they can launch an endless stream of resources across the solar system. Hell, maybe you have the robots on board to do detail work in transit.
Megastructures are multi-generational projects. Superstructures might not be
Well, one generation is starting it, now. Is that just supposed to stop for the next 75 years?
I dont understand why we’re even arguing about this…
Starting what? I’m not aware of any mega-structures or terraforming projects underway.