DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post

**megasprut** · 05-02-2012, 08:46 PM

I asked the question up there a bit...what do we class as the forseeable future...
For me I give asteroid/Off Earth mining 50 years and I have also said that up there somewhere.
I'm sure I have also mentioned the difficulty of such a venture as is the case with any venture to do with space.
It's all going to be difficult....But what we see as difficult now might be common place in 50 years.

I think the general consensus was that the "foreseeable future" is not a defined timeframe, but when referring to technological development, is the point up until which the changes are so great that all of our predictions are just crap. It's generally agreed that anything beyond 100 years is ridiculous to think about. I'm taking a stab in the dark and saying in 50-70 years time we will have built upon today's technology with a few huge leaps, enough to make this quite possibly economically feasible, but not enough to change the world so much it's impossible to predict. It's a bold claim but it's just where I see the likely breakthroughs occurring.

So it seems we, you and me agree?
Not sure about the others...too many red herrings about.

Don't think that because they don't agree with us they are red herrings or have an agenda. We are talking about predictions here BC, everyone is entitled to their opinion and diddly has made me think about this topic much more than I ever have before. And in the end, you and I are essentially disagreeing about the state of Earth mining in 50 years with the person with "Earth Science" under his name. Some humility would go a long way.

05-02-2012, 08:46 PM	#77
megasprut Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 493 Senior Member	I asked the question up there a bit...what do we class as the forseeable future... For me I give asteroid/Off Earth mining 50 years and I have also said that up there somewhere. I'm sure I have also mentioned the difficulty of such a venture as is the case with any venture to do with space. It's all going to be difficult....But what we see as difficult now might be common place in 50 years. I think the general consensus was that the "foreseeable future" is not a defined timeframe, but when referring to technological development, is the point up until which the changes are so great that all of our predictions are just crap. It's generally agreed that anything beyond 100 years is ridiculous to think about. I'm taking a stab in the dark and saying in 50-70 years time we will have built upon today's technology with a few huge leaps, enough to make this quite possibly economically feasible, but not enough to change the world so much it's impossible to predict. It's a bold claim but it's just where I see the likely breakthroughs occurring. So it seems we, you and me agree? Not sure about the others...too many red herrings about. Don't think that because they don't agree with us they are red herrings or have an agenda. We are talking about predictions here BC, everyone is entitled to their opinion and diddly has made me think about this topic much more than I ever have before. And in the end, you and I are essentially disagreeing about the state of Earth mining in 50 years with the person with "Earth Science" under his name. Some humility would go a long way.
	Quote