Manifold: Insight

So, after putting hours into reading Stephen Baxter’s Manifold series I’ve tried to apply many of his concepts to our economic situation. Obviously we haven’t encountered an alien species that destroys our rooted ideas of keeping track of history, or giving up on R&D into continued technological advancement. Sometimes I wish those aliens would just show up. Give us a little push forward.
While crawling my RSS feeds and the New Scientist it is obvious there is not any hint of invention or innovation disappearing anytime soon. Instead I see a lack of moving beyond the first stages and pushing their ideas out into a practical use for industries.
I guess I just wish I read about more Malenfant’s and Paulis’ in our society. I admire the ideology of being not concerned on the small details and making sure that every aspect is new and expensive when designing plans to utilize resources from space.
“If it gets the job done then use it.”
Their engineering and business perspective of utilizing the information available and making the best decision possible instead of straining away for years and years just to specialize on some unoccupied technological problem. That is what we need more of.
Hold on. Let me taking a step back here and provide some context to this.
Hypothetical thought question:
Objective is to acquire resources/energy from the moon.
Is it more important to focus on the acquirement technologies needed or the transportation of these.
I know little or next to nothing on running a business, but I’d put my time and energy to acquirement. Let’s find that ability to earn a projected profit before the cost of transportation occurs.
If you mine a single carbonaceous asteroid you would literally change the global economy once your first shipment arrived.

To me this is where Baxter’s excellent ideas of the foreseeable future really hit hard to heart and mind. If I had a million dollars, I’d spend all my time connecting unconnected dots in what could become more efficient for humankind over vast sections of time and space.

Now to continue last minute shopping for more things to place on my tables.