[torpfactory]

I think you would be firmly in “creating completely new markets” territory at that point. It would be like trying to imagine what one would need 1000x as many transistors for, at the dawn of semiconductors. The world certainly wasn’t buying that many vacuum tubes, was it?

From my perspective, these are the big ones in the near term: 1) LEO satellite internet. Fixes the lag issues with GEO orbits, making space internet directly competitive for some applications. 2) Tourism: I would certainly pay a very pretty penny indeed to see the earth from space.

Longer term: 3) Global sun shade or other system for preventing global climate catastrophe. In 30 years I think we’ll be talking a lot about this. 4) Resource extraction, which otherwise doesn’t make sense with expensive rockets. 5) Self sustaining mars base. Still can’t figure out what the economic incentive is for this. It will cost a lot of money for what return exactly?