I have an imaginary fascination with the moons of Jupiter. The planet itself is beautiful, if not imminently useful, but the moons of the largest gas giant in our star system are tantalizingly close. Humans probably can’t get to them with horizon technology, but what about just-over-the-horizon technology?
Imagine a base on rocky Ganymede with intrepid settlers extracting water from beneath the ice of Europa, gathering chemicals (fuels?) from snowy/slushy Callisto, and harvesting heat from volcanic Io. All possible through the use of robust craft that can take-off, land, haul, and refuel under the watchful eye of the Great Red Spot.
Now you know why the exploits of SpaceX make me feel like a kid again! This idea has fired my imagination for 30 years. Over time my imagination expanded to include things like mining the asteroid belt, sucking up useful gasses from Jupiter itself, and applying extrapolated future technologies to undiscovered worlds in far flung galaxies.
But what about old tech? What will we take into the future, and what will we abandon? Will we lose hard earned knowledge that is obvious today? How were the pyramids built again? As I age, I find myself also wondering what bits of small technology will float into the future purely because they are beloved.
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