We should go all the way and do NAWPA. NAWPA was a 1950s proposal to send massive amounts of fresh water from rivers in Alaska and Canada south, some of it going all the way to Mexico. The water normally goes mostly unused into the ocean. Yes, there would be massive environmental disruptions in part because the project uses atomic weapons to do some of the engineering, but the project might reduce the expected number of future people who will starve by millions.
The Soviets actually did try mining with nuclear explosives. They decided that it was too polluting. Since they had a pretty high pollution tolerance, I’m inclined to believe them.
I think we’ll be sooner able to produce automated factories to produce automated self-repairing digging machines. There’s a lot of interesting geo-engineering we can do with automated digging machines.
We should go all the way and do NAWPA. NAWPA was a 1950s proposal to send massive amounts of fresh water from rivers in Alaska and Canada south, some of it going all the way to Mexico. The water normally goes mostly unused into the ocean. Yes, there would be massive environmental disruptions in part because the project uses atomic weapons to do some of the engineering, but the project might reduce the expected number of future people who will starve by millions.
Automatic non-starter.
Even if by some thermodynamic-tier miracle the Government permitted nuclear weapons for civilian use, I’d much rather they be used for Project Orion.
The Soviets actually did try mining with nuclear explosives. They decided that it was too polluting. Since they had a pretty high pollution tolerance, I’m inclined to believe them.
I think we’ll be sooner able to produce automated factories to produce automated self-repairing digging machines. There’s a lot of interesting geo-engineering we can do with automated digging machines.