What if instead we moved it all to a closer rock that has even more water, even more materials to manufacture crude (and even advanced) things, even more surface, more protection from radiation, and even crazier still had significantly less launch costs?

Almost any reason why the moon is better than in orbit is a point for putting it on earth.

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bs7280 13 hours ago | parent [-]

I think there's something to be said about imagining a future where we can keep the earth clean of all the nasty industrial processes we have grown accustomed to living next to. A big part about this proposed idea is that you could do a lot of manufactoring in space.

I have long theorized there will be some game changing manufacturing processes that can only be done in a zero gravity environment. EX:

- 3d printing human organ replacements to solve the organ donor problem

- stronger materials

- 3d computer chips

I do not work in material science, so these crude ideas are just that, but the important part I'm getting at is that we can make things in space without any launches once that industry is bootstrapped.

	▲	chuckadams 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Human organs manage to grow pretty well in 1G. In fact, they're almost certainly going to be terrible at it in zero g.
	▲	vel0city 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		We're able to make 3D computer chips on Earth today, and I don't know about you but all my organs managed to get made just fine on Earth. Doesn't seem like we need zero g to do either of these things. Either way, this isn't about 3D printing organs, this is about launching AI compute into space. To do important stuff, like making AI generated CSAM without worry of government intervention.