Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Loki-L t1_ivtdso2 wrote

In the near future no.

But if you ask about the 22nd century, it is at least possible.

Not likely in my opinion but at least possible.

Right now human spaceflight is still rather expensive although the cost has come down a lot.

The resources necessary to send people into space with current tech on a large scale simply aren't there.

A system that does not primarily depend on rockets like space-planes combined with skyhooks or scramjets powered with beamed energy from the ground. May sound like sci-fi today, but they are at least known to be feasible in theory without needing to discover entirely new stuff.

So what we need is to get lucky with all that collapse going on right now and the near future. Get out of it intact enough to tackle this engineering challenge and spend enough money to actually build the necessary infrastructure.

This isn't going to happen in my lifetime.

It could at least be possible by 2199 if we are really lucky.

1