[ben_w]

I basically agree with you. Even where I said 10x, because I am indeed an optimistic person.

The other stuff… well, I think it's worth the analysis, even when the answer ends up not just "no", but "hell no!".

Analysis is much cheaper than actually going to space, after all.

[godelski]

I mean tbh the problem was that Nevermark was making strong claims without the actual analysis. There's a lot of analysis out there already but he wasn't even doing the simple ones. There's a lot of armchair experts on space.

Look, I'd love to do more things in space, but we'll never be able to do them if we lie our way and aren't realistic at the costs, and benefits. It just creates strawmen that are trivial to tear down. The armchair experts aren't helping, they're hurting.