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RobinHanson's avatar

Before cotton, for America it was sugar from the Caribbean sold to Europe, which created demand for food from America to ship to the Caribbean.

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Nathan Taylor's avatar

Very good post. Excellent framing of this question. Sometimes framing is the hardest (most original) thing needed.

What I've wondered about the most is what would it take for space self sufficiency. The analogy here would be perhaps European relationship with American colonies in, say, 1600. Immediately makes me think self sufficiency would be extremely hard. Which in turn means we need to lower the bar. When would a colony in space produce something worth trading for with Earth? So reach a point of economic value (instead of exploration for its own sake, aka, not lose money). In American colony history, it was raw materials like cotton. But I suspect transport would eat that cost. Or maybe another way to look at it is how many factors of 10 in reduced transport cost to space would it take to make trading with space work? Space shuttle was $54,000/kg, Falcon 9 is $2700/kg, Falcon Heavy $1400/kb. And SpaceX Starship is quoting numbers like $270/kg.

Anyway, great post. I think most interesting near term is what price point of launch costs is needed to make economically viable to trade with space. Many historical analogies here with shipping costs over oceans.

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