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knb comments on What are "the really good ideas" that Peter Thiel says are too dangerous to mention? - Less Wrong Discussion
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My guess would be that Thiel's edgy idea has to do with something like Charter Cities (often criticized as a form of colonialism/imperialism) or new country projects.
In a totally different direction, I've long wondered whether NASA might be suppressing promising designs for advanced propulsion systems fearing their potential for extremely risky weaponization.
I doubt Thiel is thinking of this in particular however.
EDIT: Since some people below seem confused, I'm not saying I think think it is likely that NASA is really suppressing anything, I'm just saying that I have wondered about it in the past.
Regarding NASA and research suppression, I have an extremely difficult time understanding what could draw you to that conclusion. All manner of space based weaponry has been looked into by governments and found not terribly useful or practical. The energy you can bring along on a spacecraft is likewise very limited by mass constraints. The history of successes and failures in propulsion technology does not need a human cause; the universe itself may be to blame as may economic or practicality or political issues.
EDIT: a few figures to give some idea of scale. The Saturn V rocket carried a total chemical energy of ~2.5 kilotons of TNT full on the launchpad. A small subset of that winds up in the kinetic energy of motion. The Dawn probe can manage ~10 km/s by leaving its ion engine on for years on end and using electricity to shove fuel out the back extremely rapidly, producing a total kinetic energy change equivalent to ~14 tons of TNT (and not carrying the necessary energy in its fuel, merely using the sun to accelerate an inert gas electrically, and imparting much more kinetic energy to its fuel than to the spacecraft itself). Imagining a nuclear reactor driving a VASIMR or somesuch, if you used it up accelerating something for months you would create a projectile with a kinetic energy of impact a small fraction of that which you could get by using the core to make a nuclear bomb instead.
Don't misrepresent what I said. I did not state I had made a "conclusion." My reason for wondering about it is that NASA has devoted surprisingly few resources to advanced propulsion research. Something people have been complaining about for years. I think bureaucratic inertia and congressional meddling are more likely explanations, but there is no reason it has to be an either/or.
Another explanation would be that they consider advanced propulsion research military and therefore classified the research they do.
Apologies for wording. Agreement on there being annoying issues that are cause for thought. On top of that I think it's clear they could even be doing more with the technologies they currently have.
Are you arguing from first principles that space-based weapons don't work? It's one thing to say that they fail testing, but another to say that you're better at physics than Edward Teller. Anyhow, you can read some of Thiel's thoughts in the interview.
My point being that you can be much much more destructive by blowing up the energy source of a space-based weapon on Earth than using it to power a kinetic weapon, and that in any case there's no reason to think we will be building spacecraft that are a danger to anything on Earth as anything but a carrier of radiological/etc payloads or a destroyer of launch facilities during failures in the forseeable future. Upmass is very expensive.
EDIT Relativistic kill vehicles, for example, are both so far beyond or ken and useful only over such long distances (seriously, an ICBM is more surprising over distances smaller than several times the size of the entire solar system and I don't even know how many orders of magnitude simpler than the infrastructure required to make one) that I fail to see the point of worrying about them. The only space-based weapon that could be a problem that I can think about is identifying some 100 meter wide rock that is set to just miss the earth a century hence and giving it a 1 m/s push to change that fact (which according to my calculations would require an ion engine using the equivalent amount of energy to a whole day's worth of the entire world's electricity consumption, nuclear bombardment, or messing with its interaction with sunlight drastically).
Rather than interpreting "space-based weapon" as the first thing that comes in to mind and saying that's stupid, why don't you think about it for five minutes? Or look it up.
I was going off the link provided for 'relativistic kill vehicles' and assuming that not researching advanced propulsion systems having to do with space based weapons had to do with the ability to go fast. Kinetic weapons also the only type of weapon I can think of that is terribly enhanced by being in space.
As for bombs, we can already deliver a bomb of whatever type we want anywhere on Earth in 45 minutes if we feel like it. And we got fusion bombs.
As for lasers or energy weapons or something, again you run into some energy density and range issues, especially going through atmosphere. Not as severe, but its still much easier to connect it to some ground-based infrastructure if you're gonna use it. Also fail to see what it has to do with propulsion.
'Rods from the gods' style orbital bunker-buster munitions can probably be just as well provided by flying atmospheric platforms from what I've seen, just put explosives and engines on them rather than using launch to 'charge' them with orbital energy.
Satellites that kill other satellites remotely or up close are quite possible. Not exactly classically destructive, just disruptive.
Bizarre-physics of some sort? I'd think that'd be more likely to come of large expensive massive ground installations.
Drawing a blank, even with the help of google, especially for ideas that have something to do with propulsion technologies. What did you have in mind?
As someone who has worked at NASA, I can tell you that is simply impossible. NASA and keeping secrets don't mix.
Talking about monopoly can motivate a government to come and break up a business. That makes it risky for someone in a position like Thiels.
Yes, I agree that it can be risky. But he used the word "edgy" which has a different connotation, implying it would be perceived as extreme or socially unacceptable.
Isnt it obvious that all companies wish they were monopolies? Since when is that edgy?
Well, you can read his views on monopoly here. I would say some of the following is edgy, in that he's saying that (at least temporary) monopolies can be socially efficient (not just that the companies "want" to be monopolies):
But what's "edgy" and what's "mainstream" is a matter of perspective. Thiel is influenced by Austrian economics, and this sounds like something out of Schumpeter, or maybe Hayek. To someone familiar with those ideas and concepts, this is hardly startling insight, but many people really do have the prejudice that all markets should be perfectly competitive at all times.
If you think what Thiel saying is simply obvious then you likely haven't understood the main point.
Companies frequently do make moves to compete with another company. According to Thiel that happens too often. People try to be the best at the latest trend instead of focusing their efforts into an area where nobody else spends their efforts.
What do you mean with "suppressing"? Keep them as a secret and only manufacture the weapons for the US military?
No, more something like, "Maybe some NASA researchers hit upon a promising advanced propulsion designs years ago, but quietly got worried about weaponization potential, and quietly shifted focus away from advanced propulsion."