Futurology

This is so unimaginative.

There's one thing that has to happen, and the solar system opens up - manufacturing outside the gravity well. That's it.

Energy is cheap in space. The sun is right there, unfiltered. Raw materials are cheap in space - ice and metals are everywhere. Life is expensive in space

Automation makes it very easy. If you can make a robots that can maintain each other, and eventually manufacture parts, you can build mega structures given time

And we're getting very close to that. It's basically inevitable at this point... The question isn't if it's possible, it's if our species can loosen the chains of capitalism before we strangle ourselves for no reason

Booooo. You must be so fun at parties.

I refuse to believe. I don't care how rational or well reasoned your arguments may be, I won't give up hope that someday someone will be living somewhere other than Earth. Your arguments will only result in a roadmap of challenges to overcome. I, likely we, need an open ended future, don't try to take that away.

Great article. I'm glad 'Star Trek' still looms so large in the public imagination; it's given us a really hopeful template for the future.

Cool read, little bit of criticism but I didn't really see any arguments to support your point, I know it's a big issue and you're breaking it down into seperate articles which will probably argue that for you

All I could really see is that humanity assumes it has infinite progression therefore sci-fi level space travel is within perceived reach but science in reality is about working within limits.

I don't really disagree with that but one could argue that's a black and white way of thinking, humanity doesn't need infinite progression to move beyond the limitations you listed, granted it needs a lot of progress to do that but its not within the realm of impossibility.

Still a good read, lot's to ponder and fwiw I don't think we'll reach these goals either but not for the same reasons.

Definitely interested to read your take on why colonizing Mars is never happening. Far as I'm aware, there's no laws of physics stopping it, it's rather a number of complex engineering problems.