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Phil Metzger Profile picture
@DrPhiltill
Sep 18, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
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Three scenarios how industry may develop in space. "Civilization Fully Revolutionized" means offloading industrial footprint from Earth to save the planet, all humans benefit from developed economies (health care, etc..."Post Scarcity"), vastly greater horizons for science...1 Image
2/...reaching to the stars. The Slow Growth Scenario means only government space agencies like NASA invest pre-economically in off-Earth industry, and we leave commercial businesses to slowly develop profitability and new business cases. Because space is hard, this is slow.
3/ The Rapid Bootstrapping Scenario means there are actors motivated to make it happen faster than the market forces will do. They may be visionary individuals with means, citizen-led movements, or governments that see the long-term benefit of getting beyond our planetary limit.
4/ Because rapidly bootstrapping a full supply chain in space is beyond the means of even the wealthiest individuals, and because it is hard to convince people of the benefits of something so abstract, we are not (yet) on the rapid pathway. So...
5/ at the present I think the third path, the middle-speed, is the most likely. That's where we have a combination of space agency investment, some visionary pre-economic investment, and some commercial growth. Eventually the progress they collectively produce proves the case...
6/...then politicians finally realize there is a looming revolution only decades away, and it could be very very good, or very very bad, depending how it goes down. I think that's when national governments go all-in to shape it according to their own visions of the future.
7/ It MAY or may NOT be a great outcome, depending who wins the race to shape the future and how enlightened they are. When they reach "ignition", they will be in a position to abandon negotiation and to never again dilute their equity in this off-Earth industry. So...
8/...now is the time to shape the future of industry in space. It is a limited time between now and "ignition", and the stakes are huge. Let's work together to make the world of our children and grandchildren just, healthy, safe, and amazing. One way to do that is.... Image
9/...to create a movement that puts us into the Rapid Bootstrapping Scenario, to create a coalition of likeminded citizen movements and enlightened governments committed to a good future so we reach the "ignition" point first by being fast. Can we do this? I think we can.

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More from @DrPhiltill

Phil Metzger Profile picture
Jun 18
Geoengineering at its finest 😂

This touches on interesting science about the Moon crashing into the Earth both past and future and how the planet Neptune saved the Moon. (I’m not kidding.)

A 🧵 1/21
I learned this in grad school from my planetary science professor Dr. Nadine Barlow. She taught us how the Moon spirals out, because the tidal bulge on the Earth (which is caused by the Moon’s gravity) is slightly out of phase with the position of the moon because the bulge has to keep changing its location as it is trying to keep up with the Earth’s fast rotation. /2Image
Therefore, the bulge creates a net torque on the Moon’s orbit, pulling it in the forward direction, causing the Moon’s monthly orbital motion to speed up while also causing the Earth’s daily rotation to slow down. /3
Read 21 tweets
Phil Metzger Profile picture
Mar 6
Ok, now I have something new to worry about, too. I just spent the last hour exploring the differences between the Oil Resource Curse and the (potential) AI Resource Curse. I used Grok for this, so if you are an AI Skeptic then read no further. Link to the Grok chat at the end./1
2/ Grok assesses that AI will actually be not as bad as the Oil Resource Curse since intelligence produces mitigating effects. The governmental and commercial dimensions are better than for oil, but the political and social dimensions could flip either way. However,…
3/ there is a bad catch. Grok assesses that the steps we need to take to keep the political and social dimensions from flipping bad are very unlikely to be implemented in the US. Therefore, Grok estimates only a 35% chance we will take the necessary steps…
Read 7 tweets
Phil Metzger Profile picture
Jun 15, 2025
The thing is, at such an early time in human (pre-)history, they did not have standardized number systems. This led to the very long ages of kings that we see in the Sumerian King List. A few details on how this happened… 🧵/1
2/Today, most cultures in the world use base-10, and we use it for every digit in a number. The first digit is ones. The second is 10s. The third is 10x10s. The fourth is 10x10x10s, and so on.

In early Mesopotamian number systems, they did not use the same base for each digit. This example uses ones, then sixes, then 10x6s, then 3x10x6s.Image
3/ Making it more confusing, they had a different number system for each type of thing they were counting. So they had one system for counting people, another for counting sheep, another for counting bushels of barley, another for counting years, etc. The concept of “numbers” had not been generalized as an abstract concept. Numbers existed only as “numbers of sheep” or “numbers of bushels”. It is analogous to the English system of liquid measures, where the number of teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, gallons, etc., is a different count in each higher measure.
Read 14 tweets
Phil Metzger Profile picture
Jun 12, 2025
I ran into an interesting story, and since I have much time on this cruise I will write it as a thread.

Teaser: The US owes its ownership of Alaska to one of “the Eight Beauties of Ancient China,” the concubine Chen Yuanyuan from the 1600s.

Here is the tale…
🧵 /1

shine.cn/feature/art-cu…Image
Image
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2/ The first part of this story was likely embellished during the Qing dynasty but it is based in truth. When the Ming dynasty fell in the 1640s, a ruthless general of the peasant rebels, Liu Zongmin, took the concubine Chen Yuanyuan hostage and treated her abusively. Her lover (or husband), Ming general Wu Sangui, was of course humiliated and enraged!

Well, Wu Sangui was the general defending the Shanhai Pass at the eastern end of the Great Wall, responsible for keeping out the barbarian Manchu.Image
Image
3/ Rather than stay loyal to the failing Ming or join with the ascendant Chinese peasant rebels, Wu Sangui was driven to seek swift retribution against those who abused his beloved concubine. He made a personal pact with the Manchus and let them through the wall. They swiftly conquered Beijing during its time of chaos and established the long-lasting Qing dynasty.

Sui Tang Yanyi (a later Qing-era novel) probably exaggerated Chen Yuanyuan’s role in this, saying that “the empire fell for her beauty.” Nevertheless, she became legendary for causing the downfall of the Ming and the establishment of the Qing. But how does this relate to Alaska?Image
Read 12 tweets
Phil Metzger Profile picture
May 18, 2025
1/ Let’s walk through a mining competition cycle. The students take their robots to the judge station for inspection and weigh-in. (More points awarded for lower-mass robots.) Image
Image
2/ They set their robots on the forklift platform to lift into the arena. Image
Image
3/ Robots are placed on the regolith in an orientation chosen randomly by the judges (so the robotic autonomy can’t be cheated).
Read 12 tweets
Phil Metzger Profile picture
May 17, 2025
@bobster190 @DJSnM @WilliamShatner The paper has all the citations to other work inside it. I linked the paper because it wouldn’t make sense to duplicate that in a tweet. The paper wasn’t about Pluto. It was only about asteroids. We wrote a second paper that discusses Pluto and I think answers your objections. /1
@bobster190 @DJSnM @WilliamShatner 2/ That 2nd paper is here (no paywall so it is accessible):

It does discuss the arguments surrounding the IAU’s vote in 2006. I think we did a much better and more complete review of the issues than any other publication on the topic. Most other papers…sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
@bobster190 @DJSnM @WilliamShatner 3/ …include patently false information about why Pluto was voted down by the IAU. For example, the claim that asteroids were demoted because they share orbits is utterly nonsensical. Even a cursory review of the publication history shows this. Also the claim that the Moon…
Read 16 tweets

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