Resolves to “yes” if a greater amount of mass is intentionally imported to Earth than exported from Earth over calendar year 2050. Does not count destructive satellite disposal via deorbiting, accidental or natural impacts of asteroids or comets, or other unintentional mass transfers.
1,000
3.00@MalachiteEagle Autonomous Spacecraft Intelligence?
By 2031 specifically? It's this a reference to something?
@DanHomerick /RemNi/will-we-get-asi-before-2031
Manifold so far seems to be saying ASI by around 2031.
And yeah, think you could get self-replicating factories into space in the 2030s in some form. That could potentially industrialise the solar system pretty quickly
@MalachiteEagle Interesting point of view. I think it's got some merit, but doesn't really move my assessment very much.
Even genius++ level AI will still limited by how fast things can be built, tested, launched, travel, and operate. There will still be "unknown unknowns" and there will still need to be iterative improvements stacked together with engineering breakthroughs. It could make the "design" phase of engineering happen a lot faster, though, and that's pretty important.
Still, in the end, my strong NO comes from where most mass will be needed. High-value materials like platinum-group metals will certainly get dropped down the gravity well for use in our top-of-the-technology-pyramid facilites on Earth.
But lower tech stuff, the high-mass, low value metals and consumables? If they're mined in space, they'll be more valuable up there then down here. And if "asteroid mining" isn't a major industry yet in 2050, then relatively cheap lift will mean a lot of mass is still being boosted out of our well.
2050 would have to be in a pretty narrow window where there is lots of "in situ resource extraction", but very little ISRU. I don't think that period will last very long at all, especially if SpaceX gets a Mars colony going.
@DanHomerick it's just so hard getting mass out of a gravity well, even if you have a space elevator. Getting mass down a gravity well however can be very cheap. I think for 2050 it depends on many things playing out on Earth. There might be vast industrial capacity on Earth's surface compared to now, but it's somehow cheaper to bring metals down from asteroids than it is to bring them up from the deep crust. That could result in the scenario described in this question. But still, as you point out, industry in space is likely to be a thing as well sometime this century, so it's difficult to estimate.
Things could also be very underwhelming from an industrial perspective by 2050.