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You're thinking in terms of current consumers. Ocean resources may be cheaper for Earth use, but space resources will be cheaper for space uses. We're finally on our way to bootstrap a space economy, and it has a good chance of being self-sustaining.

> Now a "species" of software intelligences on the other hand, which could adapt their bodies to fit their environments, the various collections of asteroids might present a compelling opportunity to build a dyson swarm (assuming they could think of some useful/valuable to them way to use that much energy).

We still need to get to appropriate technologies, which is precisely what expanding into space now is doing. A Dyson swarm is not something you suddenly build in your garage from scrap parts after a night of heavy drinking.

> It's kind of hilarious to think that people seriously propose terraforming mars as a strategy to avoid the dangers of global warming or nuclear war; there are a thousand other uses for all that time, labor, and money. Many of which could mitigate threats like that for a tiny fraction of the cost.

Yeah, no. RE nuclear war, there are diminishing returns on the margin in political involvement; hell, a big part of the nuclear danger is the fact that too many people are involved. By redirecting space sector into this, all you'd be doing is squandering the engineering talent.

RE global warming, space sector is quite well aligned with efforts on global warming (where do you think the climate data comes from? or even the models on how global warming works?), and long-term, it offers moving some heavier industries up the gravity well, mitigating the pollution involved.

while it might be possible for a space economy to exist I'm saying that humans will never stay in space for long periods of time - the space economy (except for the satellites and stuff we have now), will basically revolve entirely around space tourism - so all those resources and manufacturing techniques will only be valuable insofar as they support space tourism (which will only be a fraction of the overall tourism industry, i think it would even be relatively niche).

There's a lot of interesting stuff in space, for a physicist or astronomer - but they don't even need to go there themselves to learn about it.

I don't think spacex's 25 billion valuation is ridiculous at all. but if it went public it would probably get ridiculous (this wouldn't necessarily be a horrible thing, there are far greater tragedies), based on people's misunderstanding of what is technically possible in the near or medium term future, in large part thanks to disproportionate screen time anthropocentric science fiction gets.

Well feel free to hang around on Earth while the rest of the species launches exciting scientific and engineering endeavors.

> It's kind of hilarious to think that people seriously propose terraforming mars as a strategy to avoid the dangers of global warming or nuclear war;

Is anyone actually saying this though? I honestly don't think I've ever seen this suggested.

Musk says things close to this. He believes we eventually either expand into space or go extinct.

There are lots of potential filters that could end us: global warming, nuclear war, the eventual death of the sun, etc. Just getting a second planet gives us a ton of protection from many of these filters and we have to start working on a way to leave the solar system at some point, so it may as well be now.

Also, survival aside, I'm of the opinion that "just because" is a perfectly valid reason to set up colonies, terraform planets etc.

I wasn't born for the moon landing. I feel like I'm going to be upset if I make it to old age and we haven't accomplished anything as great as that in my lifetime.

this is where I'm saying people are totally brainwashed into thinking the moon landing is greater than, I don't know, the development of the first compiler. The first compiler dwarfs the moon landing in terms of implications.

More recently I would put alphago beating human grandmasters at go ahead of the moon landing.

I would put crispr ahead of the moon landing.

I would put the current progress on self driving cars ahead of the moon landing.

Three main points here:

1. Building a second society on Mars isn't meant to preserve the human species, it's meant to preserve modern human civilization. That's a higher order thing which is much more vulnerable to the climate catastrophe and other threats.

2. Industry in space and on Mars is going to be ludicrously profitable. Made in Space is manufacturing best-in-class optical fibers in orbit because gravity introduces crystalline defects [0]. As launch costs decrease we're going to find there are enormous numbers of low mass high value goods which can be improved by manufacturing in an ambient acceleration less than 1g. Mars will be profitable because its gravity well is tiny compared to Earth's - if you want 2 kt of steel in high Earth orbit for your new habitat, launching it from Mars and flying it over will be cheaper than lifting it from Earth.

3. If you buy into Hirschman's ideas of Voice and Exit, a frontier is arguably a necessary component of a healthy civilization. A new world for the misfits and revolutionaries to test their ideas on stabilizes the old world, and the ideas that turn out to be good feed back into the old world improving life for everyone.

Lastly, if humans fare well in lower gravity, I think we'll see tons of people choosing to live in orbit. The radiation problem is really a mass budget problem, it goes away on larger habitats. Consider the ultra-rich first, who could build perfectly climate controlled terrariums with a billion dollar view of Earth, where their very bones feel lighter, they can jump 10 feet, and breach out of their swimming pool like a shark. The leisure class could happily live up there full time, and even those with work down below could vacation for a couple months a year. Later on, I think retirement homes on orbit will be the default. It's much harder to break a hip when you only weigh 20 lbs, and retirees tend to move to a facility and then stay there so the commute to the surface is less of an issue.

[0]: http://madeinspace.us/mis-fiber/

3. nope, don't buy it. the real frontier is intellectual in nature not physical.

2. If there is non trivial amounts of manufacturing done in space, it will not be done by humans.

1. modern human civilization is incapable of the feat you're talking about and even if it could muster the will it would be the greatest misallocation of resources of all time simply due to the scale of it - worse than any communist 5 year plan. Terraforming happens on a similar time scale to the birth and death of human societies. I don't see a future where humans as we know them today are on mars as anything more than a gimmick - and that's even on timescales which are outside the bounds of our lifetimes.

4. this last point is the exact type of vision I'm so cynical about. Basically pure fantasy. Even if it could be done, it wouldn't be what you imagine it to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswYl7RLRNE "This scene is Tarkovsky's response to the wormhole sequence in "2001". You get the shapes and the lights flying towards you but all of the artificial color has been taken out. By showing driving as this abstract sequence of lights and tunnels, we're reminded how a mundane thing like driving really involves a huge amount of technology and engineering, and that maybe this advanced technology this isn't liberating and exciting, but alienating and oppressive. "

optimism and cynicism have to be balanced against each other and your vision is sorely missing one of them.

1. I didn't write a word about terraforming. There are a thousand options for sealed habitats on Mars. Sad little caves at first, enormous indoor cities later. Once the economic incentives line up it'll happen.

2. Of course it'll be highly automated, my company's building automated manufacturing with this in mind. We haven't got robots as flexible and capable as humans yet though, and I'm skeptical that we'll get them before giant economic opportunities appear in space. I think there'll be humans up there to tend the machines, or at least teleoperate them with acceptable latency for everything beyond Earth orbit.

3. Fair difference of opinion.

4. Orbit is ~400 km and ~8,000 km/h away. It's fairly likely at this point that reusable ultra-heavy lift vehicles are going to be reality. Think about what comes 2 generations after BFR/New Glenn, and the idea of putting grandma in orbit shouldn't seem so far fetched.

Space is of value in space. Rich people want to go there for fun and satelites need to be put there for telecommunications. You talk about colonization and raw materials, but neither of these are the current business models being pursued.

A dyson swarm, even a very small one (relative to the size of the sun), would provide insane amounts of energy.

Moon tourism will be big. Once it is economical to offer prices in the low six figures, lots of people will want to go.

Setting up a successful colony on Mars will be an immense challenge that will require many beneficial technology and engineering innovations that can be exported back to Earth.

And of course there is the immense scientific value of exploring other worlds.

It's going to happen. It's just a question of when.

You're thinking a lot further in the future. Company valuations are based on real money today. There are no dyson swarms or Mars colonies. Tesla launches communication satellites into low earth orbit and that is how its worth is calculated.

time when company valuations were based more on today real money than future prospects, hype and speculation, is long gone.

The comment I responded to was talking about the overall purpose of going to space, including the future.

I don't disagree with you about what the space industry looks like today.

> You're thinking a lot further in the future.

That is what every pyramid scheme expects out of its victims.

The only immediate value is satellites for telecommunication.

Next decade or two, maybe low-gravity vacations?