Matching dinosaur footprints found on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean

Re:Matching dinosaur footprints found on opposite sides of t... by simonh on Monday August 26, 2024 @07:25PM (#41363185)

Imagine that for the first 50 years of aviation all airplanes had been single use, and then in the 1960s someone figured out how to make them reusable. Thats what’s happening with space flight. The next 75 years are going to be interesting.

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.

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Re:Matching dinosaur footprints found on opposite sides of t... by Nevermark on Monday August 26, 2024 @08:11PM (#41363424)

I think the biological difficulties of human space travel, and its unprofitably so far, have given us a very poor perspective on how fast thing can progress.

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.)

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