Good points. It could be that once NASA turned the corner from being an agency that managed grand endeavors to one that issues space-use permits, there was no going back. Per the discussion last night, protecting infrastructure is a valid role — but not a very inspiring one.

Regarding that last idea, those AI mining robots out in the Asteroid Belt will eventually descend on Earth will a full “liberation” Armada built from the very ore they were constructed to retrieve.

The pitch: It’s Terminator meets Battlestar Galactica.

I’d watch it!

Governments are creations for initiating some measure of control over a collection of individuals (hereafter “the citizenry”). Bureaucracies like NASA are simply less transitory efforts to impose same on generations of citizens. Absent some sort of existential threat to the government (however logically inconsistent, people do tend to seperate governmental entities from the general citizenry), I can’t think of any reason for said government to see it being to it’s own advantage to relax it’s efforts at achieving and maintaining control over the citizenry.

The trick then becomes one of framing the issue as an existential threat that is best resolved by as diffuse a government regulatory environment as can be manipulated by the citizenry. This can take the form of a traditional political threat, of course, but I suspect something more along the lines of the cinematic Armageddon-type circumstance (an existential threat who’s resolution lies off planet) would actually prove to be more achievable as a practical matter.

I have lately been thinking about the concept of linking AI development with just such an effort (extra-planetary resource development) as a mechanism to accelerate (and restrict the threat potential) of both. Needs more thought still.