I do think 2100 is a stretch, space is hard, but we’ll likely have all the basic elements of that proved out by then.

Those are no longer the bottlenecks.

Reusable systems & the loss of dependency on traditional pilots are just two profound bottlenecks we have recently passed. Other thresholds will fall quickly.

Machines are getting smarter (not even talking about general AI) and smaller, launch costs are collapsing & demand for resources accelerating.

The BIG bottleneck is simply economic profitability. Just as there has been an explosion of satellites recently, there will be an explosion of resource extraction the moment it becomes net profitable, even on a forward looking basis.

(I.e. shareholder returns will relentlessly accelerate investment long before actual cash flow positivity is required.)

But by 2500 sure. And likely by 2500 some form of self sustaining asteroid with propulsion will leave the solar system.

I used to think ince that happens for a few thousand trips, humanity will survive enough that our descendants will last billions of years. Not the same biology, certainly not a single culture, but once the technology exists nothing can stop the spread.

Then I read about the “light cage” concept.

https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/empiremap.php#ligh...

Right now, all we seem to be doing is putting ever more powerful tools in the hands of the same, barely evolved ape minds. Not a recipe for long term success AFAICT.

Ironically many of our biggest worries, like climate collapses, extreme pollution, inequality, huge regional wars (Taiwan), population collapses, pandemics, don’t present much risk for expansion into space.

Only a full civilization collapse or extinction event would do it.

So definitely a long term optimistic outlook for “life”.

But the specific ways things play out could still be catastrophic from individuals perspectives. The rate and nature of changes these next decades will be profoundly disruptive & challenging to every aspect of our existence, all at once.

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If we don’t reflect the universes non-human created resources as a joint inheritance, in a legally and economically explicit way, there is going to be a great culling of some kind - there is no way around that.

We need formal recognition and a societal structure supporting that, for a shared ownership of raw natural resources in some way, to have a soft transition.

I don’t see this as a violation of capitalism, but as a completion of property rights under capitalism.

It accomplishes what communism tries to do by mistakenly socializing production, instead by joint shareholding of nature’s original undeveloped resources as a gifted asset nobody created. And allowing capitalism to do its job of maximizing that value for all of us.

Bidding to extract resources, rental of limited shared resources (land) etc can continue unchanged. But everyone will be compensated for their part of raw resources as they are privatized or used exclusively.

Not because we could never do it, but there won’t be any motivation to.

We will send relatively tiny ships, initially as probes, then as resource extraction & reproduction systems.

With laser acceleration & fusion deceleration (potentially fed by hydrogen collected collected from the target system), travel between systems can happen within 1-10% of the speed of light.

So only ten or so years to the closest systems.

That (propulsion) technology is not far off now. The bottlenecks are the need for further miniaturization, and our economy could not yet support the cost of, nor is it ready to benefit from, that scale of investment.

Whatever “format” our technology/lifeform has evolved to, we will be able to be sent it in extremely compact form, given any thing large can be recreated at the destination.

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Ironically though, despite a decade or so sounding very fast to us now, with time deflation (I.e. absolute time translating to higher & higher subjective time as “we” and our ability to process information & act speed up), decades between systems will subjectively Become be aeons of time.

But resource needs will also accelerate, so the necessity will be there.

So space will be deflationary, along with time. A meter & a second today will have much more relative meaning in the future as everything becomes more compact and faster.

Think about how the digital latency around the planet remains a constant, but as computing centers increasingly compactly, and grow in processing power, by orders of magnitudes, distributed computing with any serial or regular merging component will have to become ever more & more local.

Mars is big latency today. In 50 years, cross planet communication will be a relatively big latency.

Likely 40 years eventually, for the first trip, because no point sending a craft that takes 400 when waiting results in tech that takes 40.

While I am more on the side of decline and fall (not absolute doom!), I do not rrule out that we overcome a lot of our issues.

In my opinion, this is wildly overoptimistic.

Sounds like climate change is already, and major military conflict/genocide very soon will be, basically entirely solved problems in your book.

They still matter.

How long intelligent life depends or cares about a “natural” Earth biosphere is impossible to predict. “We” will for a while. But for how long?

Wars and any destructive conflict will always matter. They increase existential risk for individuals and collectives, and waste resources.

We are used to casually equating the future of the Earth, the biosphere, intelligence, civilization, humanity, our systems & communities, and each of us as individuals.

But they are all different things, whose trajectories are increasingly separating.

"A basically fucked Earth, but with the surviving elites continuing to party on as usual" by 2100 is where we seem to be headed on our current trajectory.

But profitable problems get solved when they are solvable.

And advances in different areas are increasingly non-separable.

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In any case, space resource extraction & manufacturing will replace harmful counterparts on Earth.

And provide vast wealth, sustainable materials, energy, and other advancements that could enable serious Earth greening & rehabilitation efforts.

Better to welcome & harness increasing options, than command the tides to stop.

Except that we have thought similar things before.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union people (in the west) thought that we had been through the great danger of nuclear war, and were set for a peaceful and prosperous future. SO much so that the idea of "the end of history" became extremely influential.

IMO that is why the west is finding it so hard to cope with the world turning out to be a dangerous place.

> The best starting point would be what does interest him and what is he most likely to focus on.

I am not convinced we are seeing compounding acceleration. I think that era is past.

We are still advancing technologically, but I think it is questionable whether we are doing so at an accelerating pace:

Blog post on that topic: https://pietersz.co.uk/2012/05/innovation-crisis