Great Reset General: A One Stop Shop

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
Identity printer goes Brrr, gangs got stacks of votes.

If people ever leave Earth en masse, I can expect the "United Federation of Planets" to be some massive "Potemkin Village" that has loads of gang violence, a barely functioning economy, a barely educated except in-propaganda populace and a bunch of elitist dudes talking about how enlightened they all are and how all those new Star-Nations doing so much better than them need their "guidance"
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
I'd like to note that we literally have an entire solar system full of resources, a closed system is not necessary.
Let's do the math.
• a single asteroid can contain up to $20 trillion worth of metals
• it could cost $27 Billion to mine an asteroid

With that in mind, why don't we already have asteroid mining? Why haven't we had it since the cold war space race?

The answer, because a self-sustaining space colony would be the corporatocracy's worst nightmare.

Barring some soft scifi-tier breakthroughs in engine technology, it'd always be cheaper to manufacture necessities on site from local raw materials than ship them from earth. So the corporatocracy wouldn't be able to maintain control through the threat of boycotts of essential products and raw materials. Likewise, importing scabs to decrease the value of the colonists' labor would be obscenely expensive and lightspeed lag would mean telepresence wouldn't be practical. Furthermore, the corporatocracy couldn't give a rebellious colony the gaddafi treatment, since the same spacecraft engine technologies which would be necessary to travel to the location of and establish a space colony in the first place could be very easily repurposed into ensuring MAD.

We've had viable technological concepts for colonizing and exploiting the resources of the solar system since the cold war space race and the potential profits are absolutely immense, so why are we only seeing the Musks and Bezoss of the world throwing funding at private spaceflight now rather than as soon as it became possible? Because the technology to get there and acquire useful resources was one thing, but the computing technology to do so with entirely robotic labor rather than with human astronauts who could inconveniently declare independence as soon as their colonies became self-sustaining and possessors of MAD deterrence with earthbound civilization's monopoly of force was another.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Let's do the math.
• a single asteroid can contain up to $20 trillion worth of metals
• it could cost $27 Billion to mine an asteroid

With that in mind, why don't we already have asteroid mining? Why haven't we had it since the cold war space race?

The answer, because a self-sustaining space colony would be the corporatocracy's worst nightmare.

Barring some soft scifi-tier breakthroughs in engine technology, it'd always be cheaper to manufacture necessities on site from local raw materials than ship them from earth. So the corporatocracy wouldn't be able to maintain control through the threat of boycotts of essential products and raw materials. Likewise, importing scabs to decrease the value of the colonists' labor would be obscenely expensive and lightspeed lag would mean telepresence wouldn't be practical. Furthermore, the corporatocracy couldn't give a rebellious colony the gaddafi treatment, since the same spacecraft engine technologies which would be necessary to travel to the location of and establish a space colony in the first place could be very easily repurposed into ensuring MAD.

We've had viable technological concepts for colonizing and exploiting the resources of the solar system since the cold war space race and the potential profits are absolutely immense, so why are we only seeing the Musks and Bezoss of the world throwing funding at private spaceflight now rather than as soon as it became possible? Because the technology to get there and acquire useful resources was one thing, but the computing technology to do so with entirely robotic labor rather than with human astronauts who could inconveniently declare independence as soon as their colonies became self-sustaining and possessors of MAD deterrence with earthbound civilization's monopoly of force was another.
Actually going and getting an asteroid would glut the market for metals so much the value of metals in the asteroid would drop below the cost to mine it. You can't just throw a cubic kilometer of platinum into the free market and think it's still going to trade at the same price as when the whole world only had 10,000 tons of the stuff.
 

The Immortal Watch Dog

Well-known member
Hetman
Imagine being thread banned in your opening post for derailing a thread that hasn't even started yet by an iteration of mods who were all dogs for the Federal Government or a local political machine.

That totally doesn't make the conspiracy guy look like he is onto something, no siree.



This comes from Jacque Cuasteau who said this at a now scrubbed from the headlines speech at the UN where he called on its member nations to begin euthanizing a quarter a million people a day.

He was a member of something called the Human extinction movement.
 
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Bassoe

Well-known member
Actually going and getting an asteroid would glut the market for metals so much the value of metals in the asteroid would drop below the cost to mine it. You can't just throw a cubic kilometer of platinum into the free market and think it's still going to trade at the same price as when the whole world only had 10,000 tons of the stuff.
Also much of the value of many asteroids would be the fact that it is already in space. The first asteroid we would want to capture is a very pure nickle-iron asteroid to use as a source of structural materials for space ships and space stations.
So deliberately run with that and have a currency tied to the hard value of manufacturing new o'neill cylinders for lebensraum. Every group of crazed ideologues who've been losing earthbound cultural wars can have their own private utopia in accordance with their preferences, assuming they can kickstarter enough to buy a stake in and fund your initial invention and launch of orbital assembler infrastructure.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
So deliberately run with that and have a currency tied to the hard value of manufacturing new o'neill cylinders for lebensraum. Every group of crazed ideologues who've been losing earthbound cultural wars can have their own private utopia in accordance with their preferences, assuming they can kickstarter enough to buy a stake in and fund your initial invention and launch of orbital assembler infrastructure.
You honestly believe random groups of crazy ideologues can afford an O'Neill cylinder? That's like building a business to manufacture Aircraft Carriers to sell to the Mafia.

Besides which, the first time a group of idiots kill everybody on an O'Neill cylinder, which is going to happen really fast if your customer base is crazed ideologues, your business model is going down the toilet either from people realizing how dangerous space living is and shying away from your product or from being regulated to death by governments who don't want to see another 10,000 bodies on the news.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
You honestly believe random groups of crazy ideologues can afford an O'Neill cylinder? That's like building a business to manufacture Aircraft Carriers to sell to the Mafia.

Besides which, the first time a group of idiots kill everybody on an O'Neill cylinder, which is going to happen really fast if your customer base is crazed ideologues, your business model is going down the toilet either from people realizing how dangerous space living is and shying away from your product or from being regulated to death by governments who don't want to see another 10,000 bodies on the news.

Once you get enough industry up into space yeah a collection of ideologues could afford and O'neil cylinder.

Keep in mind that the principle is simple you spin a tin can around quickly and you can build them in a moduel way so you can slowly expand them. Space is one of those things that when the ball finally starts rolling at a certain speed it will explode in population.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Once you get enough industry up into space yeah a collection of ideologues could afford and O'neil cylinder.

Keep in mind that the principle is simple you spin a tin can around quickly and you can build them in a moduel way so you can slowly expand them. Space is one of those things that when the ball finally starts rolling at a certain speed it will explode in population.
Okay, I'll grant that's theoretically possible in a sufficiently advanced scenario, but I think you maybe don't realize how big a jump you just made there. We were talking about hauling a single asteroid back to earth for the first time and why it won't make a profit, and then suddenly a massive O'Neill cylinder industry sufficient that even fringe crazies can afford one. There's a few steps left out there, and the big one, that an asteroid will glut metal commodity markets and prevent there from being any profit, has to be addressed about five hundred steps before "we have so much space industry crazed ideologues can afford megastructures."

You're missing a lot in saying an O'Neill cylinder is just a spinning can. Power systems, fuel systems, computer systems, windows large enough to let in the sun, air purification, water recycling, transport of goods, living spaces, etc. It's going to be more complex than a major city because a city doesn't need to make it's own air and water and won't die if somebody opens the wrong door. "An asteroid" gets you O'Neill cylinders in the same sense that a fir tree gets you a fully furnished modern home.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Okay, I'll grant that's theoretically possible in a sufficiently advanced scenario, but I think you maybe don't realize how big a jump you just made there. We were talking about hauling a single asteroid back to earth for the first time and why it won't make a profit, and then suddenly a massive O'Neill cylinder industry sufficient that even fringe crazies can afford one. There's a few steps left out there, and the big one, that an asteroid will glut metal commodity markets and prevent there from being any profit, has to be addressed about five hundred steps before "we have so much space industry crazed ideologues can afford megastructures."

You're missing a lot in saying an O'Neill cylinder is just a spinning can. Power systems, fuel systems, computer systems, windows large enough to let in the sun, air purification, water recycling, transport of goods, living spaces, etc. It's going to be more complex than a major city because a city doesn't need to make it's own air and water and won't die if somebody opens the wrong door. "An asteroid" gets you O'Neill cylinders in the same sense that a fir tree gets you a fully furnished modern home.

Its going to take a few hundred years to get from point a to point b but its very possible to get to point b.
 

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
Well, I just saw a commercial for Discovery+ that was going on about the environment, and started with 'When we need to, we can act. We can build back better.'

At which point I skipped the commercial, and now have no plans to ever give money to Discovery, ever again.
 

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