this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
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Thinking that asteroid mining is on the level of ftl travel or penrose spheres is truly a take. This contrarian neo-luddite streak on the left is unconstructive
How is it neo-luddite to accept the reality that we need to carefully plan our resources and not just expect shit will go like the movies? If anything expecting space travel to be like a video game hampers our ability to find solutions that don't live up the the "space colonial" ideal. Sure, if we figure out how to mine asteroids in my lifetime without expending more resources than we would gain, fine, I'll eat my hat. But you're talking a round trip of insanely heavy stuff over unfathomable distances when Space X currently can barely put people in orbit.
You are the one treating spaceflight like a video game here. FTL, stagnancy, and unrealistically efficient rockets are mainstays in that genre. Dialectical materialist analysis of the development of human civilization is not.
Hmm I'll take your word for it, but I still don't think it's unreasonable to consider that the resources of a planet can dictate a civilisations technology.
Of course resources are a limitation. But instead of investigating a supposed limitation and seeing what can be overcome and what is truly fundamental, you have people either giving up and calling the issue intractable or not putting in the work while expecting it to be resolved. Example: liquid fuels. Inside of America there are two wolves—one correctly notes the high carbon cost of liquid hydrocarbons and the high money cost of synthesizing them and concludes there is no future for liquid fuels, while the other hears "synthetic fuels" and assumes the problem is already solved and so electrification need not be hurried. In reality, the high money cost can be overcome with sufficient buildup of renewables, as is beginning to be seen in China and will become obvious in the 2030s.
I see your point.