Google and SpaceX are in talks to build data centers in orbit, pitching space as the future home for AI compute, even as costs today remain far higher than on the ground.
The extremes of space and the engineering of components goes far beyond just gravity. While there is no doubt that new technology would be developed this is not the government doing it. You really think they are going to give this technology away for free like the US government did? Highly unlikely.
It is not about refusing to see the forest because harvesting asteroids, then returning them to our planet for use on the ground is bonkers level aspirations. It would make more sense to keep them in space for manufacturing, but we are very far away from any sort of space building platform that could process raw materials into a finished product.
Energy from the sun is indeed abundant in space, but the costs of sending materials up will remain prohibitive until we no longer need rockets. That type of technology is still very far away although some proposals like a launch rail cannon, space elevator, or ablative laser propulsion could eventually solve this issue.
You also are missing just how fast technology is moving. Current AI centers expect to swap out hardware every three years or so. Who will be up in space swapping out the hardware of possibly millions of satellites. This is another added cost because realistically they will just have to keep launching.
You last comment completely misunderstands who the luddites where and what they wanted. They were against technology taking away livelihood not the technology itself. Your comment completely ignores this reality and paints luddites as something entirely different.
The extremes of space and the engineering of components goes far beyond just gravity. While there is no doubt that new technology would be developed this is not the government doing it. You really think they are going to give this technology away for free like the US government did? Highly unlikely.
It is not about refusing to see the forest because harvesting asteroids, then returning them to our planet for use on the ground is bonkers level aspirations. It would make more sense to keep them in space for manufacturing, but we are very far away from any sort of space building platform that could process raw materials into a finished product.
Energy from the sun is indeed abundant in space, but the costs of sending materials up will remain prohibitive until we no longer need rockets. That type of technology is still very far away although some proposals like a launch rail cannon, space elevator, or ablative laser propulsion could eventually solve this issue.
You also are missing just how fast technology is moving. Current AI centers expect to swap out hardware every three years or so. Who will be up in space swapping out the hardware of possibly millions of satellites. This is another added cost because realistically they will just have to keep launching.
You last comment completely misunderstands who the luddites where and what they wanted. They were against technology taking away livelihood not the technology itself. Your comment completely ignores this reality and paints luddites as something entirely different.
The government didn’t do it before either. They contracted private firms to do it, like Boeing and Rocketdyne…