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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

It's naive to presume that one problem doesn't beget solving the other. Humans, for example, almost to a tee, define ourselves in terms of others - tribal heritage I guess. How long do "nations" drawn on 2D boundaries survive once there's tribes which operate in 3D space on other planets, or spread out through the solar system?

Which is to say nothing of the riches that await us if we can solve orbital and deep space access problems. If you can get to Mars, you can get to a bunch of asteroids with enough gold and platinum to ensure only the rich will have things made of wood.

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Who's to say country X won't nuke you out of the sky before you have a chance at mining those materials? Whether we like it or not, international politics will dictate the course of humanity when it comes to space, unless some isolated group manages to do it in secret.

Further, even if a group manages to secure trillions of tons of common materials for us today, who's to say it will be given out for free? If it is, well, maybe I want you to give my country a bit more of the share than other countries, or I'll take their share by force. Even if we emerge a united world after something like that, we may find that we've developed far superior technology that has no use for the materials you've acquired.

There are tons of real-world questions that have to be answered, and it doesn't matter if we don't have time to come up with a good one, because someone will pull the trigger first.

Exactly, who's to say?

The idea that all problems must be solved in some order is naive. There is no order. We don't know what the correct path to future desired social outcomes is, we have what seems to be within reach and we achieve it.

A few hundred years ago and you would have priests declaring the men who spend their leisure playing with wires and magnets, or looking at tiny things through looking glasses are wasting their time - clearly they should be working on getting more blankets and clean air to those suffering from disease!

What riches are there to be found in space and brought back to earth to sell for economic gain?

I thought space flight is too expensive and unobtanium is yet to be discovered?

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