Submitted by EricFromOuterSpace t3_zyb1l9 in Futurology
Reply to comment by KungFuHamster in Luxurious space hotels are a classic Sci-Fi trope. But American hospitality giant Hilton recently signed a deal with Lockheed Martin and Voyager Space to build the solar system’s first space hotel onboard Starlab — a space station with NASA funding — which is currently under development. by EricFromOuterSpace
It's cute you think that the 1% aren't going to hoard resources up there.
They're salivating at the prospect of finally being beyond the reach of working class revolutions, sitting up there casting bombs down on anyone that would dare threaten their wealth.
They want to become immortal gods floating safely above Earth in a paradise built off the backs of everyone trapped in the dirt.
> hoard resources up there
What? Do you imagine them hoisting ton of gold bars into LEO? It's an awfully precarious place to try and sit out some instability, especially after recent demonstrations of satellite killing missiles.
You wouldn't even need missiles you just need to pick a hole suck all the air out. You could do this with a laser array from industrial laser cutters and a lot of optical lens to focus lasers. Additionally as the rich are just sitting ducks you would have many attempts to get it right.
There's an asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter with more gold than all that has ever been mined on Earth.
That will be mined and refined, possibly in orbit, and over time manufacturing will migrate into space to join them. The window in which we have to land resources on Earth to process it and relaunch it will be maybe 100 years after it starts.
Every raw resource on Earth you can think of exists in far greater quantities in space, between Earth and the belt. Water, iron, copper, silica, you name it. Only plants, animals, and petroleum are more abundant planetside than in space.
And, of course, they will heavily defend it, and they will crush any effort to threaten them from the surface of the planet.
And if you don't think every oligarch on Earth will be onboard, you haven't been paying attention to recent geopolitics and how the mega-rich in Russia, America, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, even North Korea all play nice together.
Who the fuck cares about the geopolitics of space mining in 200 years?
Lol they wouldn't be safe at all but massive targets, if they in LEO at proper terrorist organisation could just kill them all using a laser array on earth made from a bunch of industrial laser cutters and some focal lenses. Space crafts are extremely flimsy it wouldn't take much to destroy them, additionally their location is visible to everyone so they can't hide either.
Now if they built shit underground on the moon that's a different story (pun intended).
Sounds like you'd enjoy Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light...
Not until they get free power and ignore entropy. In a few hundred years we might have the tech to sustain something like that, but until then there's always going to be a need for food, water, reaction fuel, vitamins, etc.
This isn't a creative writing class. Nobody's hoarding resources up there while it's been perfectly fine and easier to do it here.
Stop writing silly suff because you think it sounds cool
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