1) Yes, it's almost impossible to come up with numbers for space. People in the 1970s had a view that supersonic flight was going to be huge, but no-one was talking about computers much.
2) I guess so
3) I generally think threats of war are massively overblown, when you look at the poor incentives for war at this time, when land for agricultural production is cheap. The "cui bono" of going to war. And that yes, I think technology like Starlink and AST Spacemobile have the potential to boost prosperity in landlocked countries that can more easily trade, provide services and so forth.
The exciting time about this era is that we seem to have crossed a line in terms of commercial space. The whole perspective about SpaceX seems to be about things like greater automation, which is essential to all of this. Starlink works because sending things into space is becoming more like sending an airliner. This gets cheap enough, what does it open up? Is manufacturing in space possible? Do we have giant solar collectors in space collecting and transporting batteries up, energy down, or do large scale robotic manufacturing?
Wow. What a great post.
1) Yes, it's almost impossible to come up with numbers for space. People in the 1970s had a view that supersonic flight was going to be huge, but no-one was talking about computers much.
2) I guess so
3) I generally think threats of war are massively overblown, when you look at the poor incentives for war at this time, when land for agricultural production is cheap. The "cui bono" of going to war. And that yes, I think technology like Starlink and AST Spacemobile have the potential to boost prosperity in landlocked countries that can more easily trade, provide services and so forth.
The exciting time about this era is that we seem to have crossed a line in terms of commercial space. The whole perspective about SpaceX seems to be about things like greater automation, which is essential to all of this. Starlink works because sending things into space is becoming more like sending an airliner. This gets cheap enough, what does it open up? Is manufacturing in space possible? Do we have giant solar collectors in space collecting and transporting batteries up, energy down, or do large scale robotic manufacturing?
thank you :) v interesting!