98
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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.

[-] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

The government didn't do it before either. They contracted private firms to do it, like Boeing and Rocketdyne.....

[-] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

NASA did do a lot of it directly so no. There were subcontractors of course, but they were usually responsible for building specific things not the research that generally came from public universities and NASA.

SpaceX is not sharing their technology in the same way NASA did. In fact, they aren't even patenting their tech as to keep it secret.

this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
98 points (93.0% liked)

Technology

84733 readers
3638 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS