Strazdas
Strazdas
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

>The fundamental step for that is to build reusable rockets, which SpaceX is slowly perfecting.

Reusable rockets were used in the 60s by NASA and were not developed further because single use rockets were cheaper and safer. Nothing SpaceX has done so far superseded what NASA has done in the 60s.

>This can potentially be achieved with nuclear powered spacecrafts like the previously proposed Project Orion in the 1970s.

Not in any way that current nuclear technology allows. Though if we find a way to translate energy into matter it could be used as such.

>Without such a technology, colonizing the entire galaxy is an enormous task that may never happen.

Note that none of the fiction you mentioned has colonized the entire galaxy. In fact the biggest ones does not come close to a billion worlds (not stars!). We could easily be a galactic empire with, say, 1000 planets.

>That escalated rather quickly!

As all Von Neumann crafts do.

>A central galactic empire would find it very difficult to exercise proper control over all parts of the galaxy at once, due to the incredibly large distances and time involved. The physical barrier thus involved will naturally give rise to more decentralized and truly democratic forms of economics and governance.

Maintaining a singular government would be impossible without faster than light information and likely even without faster than light travel. I disagree that it would cause a more democratic forms of economics and governance. In fact what we see in such cases from earth-based experience is that it would create a lot of local despots. The best case scenario here is colony-states. And we know that city-states didnt really work out that well.

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