Comment by user43928

1 month ago

Have you considered that the 'NIMBY' problem here might be about permits and local resource usage rather than terrorism, which makes about no sense?

Launch requires permits too, you just don't get to jurisdiction shop...

  • When I looked it up earlier, it seemed to me that to scale this up we would require larger rockets than Starship if we cannot launch hundreds of times per day.

    Admittedly I know very little about spaceships

Permits are not costing as much as a space launch and all the extra costs associated with that environment.

If it's too expensive to outsource to another country, it's definitely too expensive to put in space instead.

  • Cost is one thing, the other is whether it will be permitted at all.

    Then there's the power grid problem.

    I understand expanding the grid takes a long time, thus the gas turbines. Which I understand are also supply-constrained, and environmentalists are not happy either.

    I'm no scientist or financial analyst, but I could imagine that the space thing would be viable especially in a scenario where AI capabilities continue to grow.

    If AI really does replace not only most knowledge work but also other labor via robotics, and this requires enormous compute, we are going to want to scale this up at a much faster rate.

    Preferably without covering a tenth of the planet with gas generators.

    • Are we, though? Going to want to scale this up, I mean.

      Unless economic systems around the world change significantly very soon, this AI replacement you so cavalierly mention would cause significant portion of human population to reach poverty, causing much unrest and mass deaths.

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