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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Yeah but everyone "needs" an e bike nowadays, which compared to regular bikes is another step back.
I initially assumed that too, but it turns out that e-bikes are even more efficient than regular bikes. In other words, holding the total amount of (food calories + electricity kWh) constant, an ebike rider can go farther than a regular bike rider on the same amount of energy.
I also recognize that it's easy to fall into a gatekeeping attitude of considering e-bikes as "cheating" compared to regular bikes, but us cyclists have really got to work hard to get over it because it's not helpful.
I think they called it a "step back" in terms of being worse for the environment, because of batteries, etc, while a common bike can be used for years and years without creating additional pollution.
They literally could just support asteroid mining so we could have all of this green tech they want without the surface mining baggage.
That tech is unfortunately too far off at this point to be able to supply batteries to the surface of the earth in time to meet the demand from all the new electric vehicles we're seeing.
0G Mining isn't a solved problem either, but we have almost zero experience with controlled reentry of materials at that scale. We would need to manufacture heat shields in space in order to do it, which is a whole other can of worms.
It's not too far off. NASA's Artemis program is going surprisingly well and with it we'll have access to resources on the Moon, especially metals that can be mined, and we can access near-Earth asteroids a lot more easily.
Hell, NASA just got a sample back from an asteroid literally a couple of days ago so I think tehnologically we'll be okay. It's high time we overcame those hurdles anyhow.
The issue isn't whether we can mine space rocks, or even if we can bring back materials from space, it's about doing it at scale and cost-effectively, soon enough for it to matter.