[stupidcar]

> The only real barrier is cost.

I feel like this could almost be a slogan for the human race at this point. Our grasp of science and engineering has reached a level where's there's very few things we might want to build where we couldn't conceivably do it. We could build the most outlandish megastructures, infrastructure and space bases if we really had to, but it all just costs too much.

[londons_explore]

"It's expensive and we couldn't find investors" really means "It's a lot of work, and nobody thinks it'll be worth it".

We might be able to anything, but the capitalist system stops us doing things that don't look profitable.

[naasking]

Profitability at time X is a pretty decent heuristic for whether something is worth doing at time X.

[danharaj]

How do you know that? Unknown unknowns.

[naasking]

Unknown unknowns are more likely to cause problems and delay completion, not accelerate development.