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Comment by getcrunk | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate your overall framing one thing worth pointing out, though is we really won’t ever be mineral limited as long as our sun is alive. I think in a 50 to 100 years asteroid mining and/or non-terrestrial habitats will become normal

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Everyone said that in the 70s, then we expected flying cars, and android servants…. Look at us today, instead of the flying cars we have war drones, war robots and the only territorial expansion is into other countries. I wish I can have the same positivity as you but I fear human won’t be around in the next 50 years if wars continue as today

We also have electric cars and reusable rockets. We can do either; it's just up to us to decide what's most important.

Electric cars aren’t impressive. If you want to actually point to the surprising innovation over that period, it’s computers and the internet.

We had mass market computers 30 years before mass market electric cars, so I think they are quite impressive.

Meanwhile GM built a few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 from 1996 to 1999, which all got recalled until 2003 because of corporate politics / 'for business reasons'.

Which is the topic of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car? from 2006.

So 'mass market' could very well have been possible about 30 years ago, without Grumpy Management … … …

Even then, having the vision to roll out superchargers, and cannibalise a very successful business, and invest a fortune in a brand new from-scratch platform, is just supremely unlikely in practice. Why jeopardise your bonus?

The first cars were also electric, it’s not groundbreaking technology. Remember the bar here is on the order of flying cars. Only computers come close to clearing that for me.

The Difference Engine design was around even before that, but it would also be bad faith to argue that computers aren't a modern miracle.

We didn’t have diesel computers able to be used by the average person and capable of roughly the same range and volume of arithmetic operations as modern computers. We did have gasoline powered cars that served precisely the same function. Electric cars are an improvement in energy efficiency, climate impact, and user experience, but really just an iterative improvement on existing vehicles.

Maybe we deserve that honestly.

Also there would be the use of new materials, such as diamond films.

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